If we are talking about ruins associated with the Old Eastern Eternal Empire, it has to be said that the most troublesome is not, as you might expect, Old Solaneum. There, the Hibric Queens’ and the elves’ intervention actually delivered a significant boon to later attempts to re-occupy it, even if it was at the glorious expense of the holy churche’s wider ambitions. Nor is it Rulani, mostly because it was a trading hub in life and then much raided early in the war, its greatest dangers dispersed, first by those who founded Solaneum then by a procession of heroic explorers thereafter.

No, the most problematic of all those ruins is Merovin, later terms the Mausoleum of Dreams by those who wanted to romanticise it, or the Hero’s Skullpile, by anyone who actually made it back out of the old city, for Merovin was the slave capital of the eastern cities, and home to its greatest arena where for a millennia the greatest gladiators of the Eastern Eternal Empire plied their trade… it was those poor souls who Merovin threw first into darkness, and who, when they saw the nature of the doom they had been delivered to, obliterated Old Merovin and buried their last masters deep in the dark earth, never to die, and now, it is those poor souls, who linger still, unrelenting in their determination to slay everything that is not bound as they are… and who day and night until they were sealed by ten arch magisters, strove to free themselves from that pit and take their bloody crusade in every direction.

On the Old cities of the East.

~By Karel du Marn, scholar of Milford.

~ Sheng Quan – Aldrahaal ~

Watching Sheng Dian[1] lead the trio away, it was hard not to shake the sensation that something was off; however, he was given no time to dwell on it, as the group of disciples from the Jade Gate Court standing nearby were already trying to get his attention again.

“Senior Li…” the leader, a Din Wenshi, saluted.

He said nothing, just glancing at them, and they winced as his cultivation strength, reflected through his gaze, oppressed them for a moment.

“There was the matter of that ruin?” Din Wenshi said a bit uneasily.

“Oh,” he sighed, because there was that.

It was what he had been attending to before Fei Munsheng and Sheng Dian sought him out.

“A ruin?” Munsheng, still standing nearby asked with interest.

“Yes, Sir Mun,” the Din Wenshi saluted him slightly.

“We will attend to it shortly,” Munsheng shrugged, then glanced back at him… and the flute in his hand. “What of that?”

He glanced again at the reed flute in his hands. It was a strange thing, to be sure, superficially normal, but holding within it a faint resonance of arrogance that was unmistakably the aura of a truly remarkable expert.

“What of it?” he asked, trying to store it away.

“…”

They both stared at it, as it refused to store, making him very glad he was wearing a mask so his moment of shock was not more visible.

“Perhaps I can do a divination on it?” Fei Munsheng suggested, politely but with a faint hint of arrogance that again made his back teeth itch.

-Yep, there is politics here all right…

Ignoring Munsheng, he turned back to the disciple and waved for him to lead on. In terms of strength and actual rank, he exceeded Munsheng in every manner, except the momentarily crucial one, which was bestowed responsibility. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t just ignore the other, as the flute had been given to him.

“Quan…”

The scowled words sank through the shared link.

“What? It was handed to me, or do you anticipate that the Crown Prince is also interested in playing with reed flutes like children make?” he sent back, a bit annoyed at the familiar tone as well, because he was not that close to Fei Munsheng.

“So, what is so weird about these ruins?” he asked the disciple.

“Well… uh… they restrict all cultivation… and start rather arbitrarily,” the Jade Gate Court disciple explained.

Off to one side, the group from the Ha clan, who had been milling about and looking a bit put out at Sheng Dian trotting off with their disciples, were also coming along, as were some other Imperial Continent sects.

“You know the instructions…” Munsheng hissed, clearly not willing to let this lie, before adding out loud, “All cultivation?”

“I do… and they said nothing about giving up every little thing to you,” he shot back.

“So, like in the mountains?” he asked the disciple, looking at the ruined, half-buried buildings as they walked.

“Uh… no,” the disciple shook his head. “They make everyone have no cultivation at all… We sent in a few scouts, who said it was creepy, but otherwise not that dangerous… except…”

-No cultivation at all? he frowned at that. That was either a very high level formation, of which there had been no outward sign when they divined for such things, or…

“Except?” Munsheng took over the conversation, and he pushed those thoughts away, because so far speculation on matters had proven rather fruitless, truth be told.

Instead, he walked on in silence, pondering that archer and also examining the ruins as they went.

The town… or maybe a city, because much of it seemed to be buried, would have been a grand place in its heyday. Many of the buildings were disguised by shallow hills, trees growing out of them and the odd tumbled wall the only sign in many places that there were much larger complexes beneath.

Unfortunately, the ground was impenetrable to qi sense, or soul sense, and, even attuned to the qi of the shard, which was much higher quality purity compared to what he had expected, it was impossible to do much more than throw the odd rock around and most serious excavation here had to happen the old-fashioned way, which had not made it popular.

The result was that exploration had been slow in the few days they had been here, and most discoveries had been made by brute force searching and chance as much as targeted divination. What had been determined was that the town was big, had several layers of occupation and most of the visible buildings were three stories high at least. The lake to the north, fed by the large river lands beyond it, had ruined buildings in it as well… and several, quite powerful qi beasts, such that they had mostly left it for opportunists to worry about.

“It’s here,” a disciple beside Wenshi spoke, as the their group stopped before a broad, rising hill out of which a large number of buildings were half exposed, as if someone had previously started excavating them and then stopped for some reason.

The style was what immediately stood out – it was sleeker, with more columns and roofs of a shallower pitch compared to what they had walked through. The buildings were also much more heavily carved and there were at least two visible stacks of columns, piled like cut tree trunks.

The whole exposed area was about 300 metres across and edged in several places with what looked like…

“Is that a wall?” he asked at last, pointing to a large stone block construction that was half-exposed from the hill to the west.

“Possibly?” the disciple responded deferentially.

Scanning from left to right, his suspicion was that it was indeed a wall and, based on the curvature, the ruin beyond it had been enclosed.

“Does this suppression field match the wall?” he mused.

“Uh… no, Senior Li, it extends to the edge of that set of buildings over there,” another disciple, from a Shu clan affiliated sect, who was standing nearby, spoke up, pointing off about 30 metres to his right.

Looking at that, and the wall, that meant it extended some 40 metres beyond the wall, which was about right for a defensive barrier, where no qi could play a role…

Picking up a rock, he tossed it as hard as he could, which was really quite hard, into the field.

As soon as it hit the barrier, all the qi and intent he had infused into it dissipated and while it retained its forward momentum, when it hit a wall set into the hillside some 150 metres away, it smashed to dust, rather than leaving a crater the size of a small house.

“Interesting,” he mused, and it was… The only reason he didn’t go in to check it out immediately was that if it really did as the scouts indicated, it would make him and anyone else in there rather… vulnerable, and that archer was still playing on his mind.

“Shall we go in and check it out?” Munsheng mused.

“Be my guest,” he said with a wave of his hand. “There are some things out here that interest me that I want to look at though.”

“…”

Munsheng scowled at him and said nothing further, though he also made no move to go in himself, instead waving several of those following him to go instead.

Ignoring them, he turned to look at the other odd thing he had noted… the towers. They were mostly tumbled down, some on their own, others built into buildings, but all, to his eye, were clearly positioned as defensive emplacements… overlooking the excavated area.

-And there are none on this hill… but the ruins of walls on two other nearby hills, with defensive emplacements… so was this place outside the periphery of the town itself?

-So… did someone dig this place up long ago, then regret it? That was his immediate thought. And they do seem to sit around the area of the suppression.

It was hard to make out the upper stories of other buildings, because the land was slowly consuming them, but many did appear quite well fortified, certainly in comparison to those he had seen around the teleport gate on the ruins within the largest hill a mile or so away.

-Then there is the sense of age in the rock…

“They have been sent through,” Sheng Dian’s voice echoed through the link, intended mostly for Munsheng he supposed.

“Good…” Munsheng replied.

As a Dao Lord, he had a good grasp of laws, both natural and martial, and the lingering Natural Intent within the rocks spoke to the age of the buildings around them fairly clearly, allowing him to guess that they were maybe 40,000-50,000 years old. Setting aside the remarkable durability of the construction, something others were already poking around at, there were traces of the style of the buried ruins in these later ones… Even here he could see that. It was visible in the columns set into walls, and also in the design of some windows and doors and such, where they were visible.

That clearly put the ruins as being older… and the natural decay of the qi within the foundation of the shard was no more than 30,000 years old.

It was a riddle, because that would place the inception of this place during the lifetime of the Blue Water Sage… which seemed rather improbable…

Shaking his head, he walked over to the large blocks of the probable gate house, which several disciples from a minor Imperial Court sect had been poking around in, pulling out some bits of masonry with writing on them. All that was discernible of the larger text, in a carved Easten face, was ‘Mauso’ on one slab, and another which had been partially reconstructed to read ‘Mer—in’.

“Is there more of this?” he asked one of the disciples in a pale blue robe.

“Yes, Senior,” the young woman saluted. “We have worked out that this was an old quarter of the town… and it was called Merovin. It appears that the language they wrote in is a very old form of the Easten language common to ruins across the Eastern continent from the dynasty before the Shan.”

-So, much older than 30,000 years then… or does time in here not pass at the same rate?

That was something that had been discussed a bit already, though mostly by those dealing with the teleport formation, and with some aggravation.

“Uh… Sir Munsheng, Sir Quan… we have a problem…”

It wasn’t Munsheng’s voice, but that of Fei Ji Shi, who had gone with Sheng Dian, that cut into his head, through the communication talisman.

“A problem?” he sent back.

“What is going on…?” Fei Munsheng’s voice trailed off, because it was obvious what ‘kind of problem’ it was even before Munsheng had finished speaking.

The temperature of the air rose, like a desert wind had just started to blow, and in the same instant, a vast shadow swept through the sky, eclipsing the rising sun and casting a grim haze over everything.

“We just lost synchronisation with the gate on the other side. Something is…” Fei Ji Shi’s voice sounded nervous now.

“It’s nothing,” Sheng Dian cut in, “just spatial dispersal on the array it seems, because of the artefact sent through most likely—”

“Intruders!” another voice, a Dao Immortal from the Sheng clan, cut Dian off.

“Outer perimeter of the gate!”

“Old man…!”

An image of an old man in a broad-brimmed grass hat, a deep green, coarse cloth robe and a grass cloak, smoking a pipe as he walked through the doorway into the large hall before the main confluence of the teleportation complex, flashed through the link cast by the Dao Immortal before going dead.

“…”

There was silence through the link for a few seconds then it re-established; however, he was already running back down the street, towards the distant ruin centre, because in that instant he had seen two things clearly: That old man was stronger than he was… and the grass cloak was the same kind that the archer had been wearing.

“Quan?” Munsheng sent after him.

“Stay here. Just don’t get into trouble!” he sent back, drawing his sword as his perception art gave his mind a nudge—

An arrow drifted between two buildings, nearly hitting him in the leg before he stepped over it. He sent a pulse of soul strength back in the direction it came, but got nothing…

Two more arrows ghosted out of the sky on lazy arcs, barely detectable. One he cut, the other he deflected, dancing away from both as they exploded with sharp cracks, scattering dirt.

“We can’t hold…! Help!” the transmission from the Shan Lai agents hidden within the defenders sang through the talisman, accompanied by a brief image of two grass-garbed figures being cut down, but a dozen disciples, including four Ancient Immortals lying dead, pierced by arrows.

“Need… aid…!” another screamed, sending a second image of a shadow, grasping hands and then darkness through that link.

“Fei?” he sent.

“We… don’t know how they got in…” Fei’s voice sounded warped, followed by a cast image showing a masked woman dressed in a blue and white robe, emblazoned on its breasts with a silver butterfly holding the four phases of the moon on its wings, walking through the hall towards him.

Dodging another arrow, he cut into a side street, even as he saw Fei parry two blows from her, barely, her blade moving with a sort of surety that spoke of mastery comparable to a true expert.

“You want to abduct my sword sister?” the woman’s words were transmitted by association as Fei desperately parried another blow—

Behind her, he saw the old man enter the hall, the shadows moving behind him… With a grimace, he pulled a recall talisman out and sent qi into it, connecting it to the parent talisman altar in the main hall where the gate was.

Space rippled around him, two more arrows passing by him harmlessly, and then he stood in the hall, getting his bearings. Two doors were being heavily warded by groups of disciples, just about preventing access from several grass-robed figures; however, the main hall entrance was lost.

“You are from the same sect as that Ancient Immortal?” he asked, noting that a dozen grass-cloaked figures were now prowling into the hall, through that doorway after the old man, who was just staring at the in transit teleport formation with narrowed eyes, puffing on his pipe.

“We are,” the masked, dark-haired woman said with a faint smile. “Who are you?”

“Sheng Quan, of the Sheng Martial Hall.”

“I am Taira no Mayumi, of the Hundred Ghosts Court,” she replied in clipped Imperial Common. “I cannot say I have heard of your Sheng Martial Hall. Clearly it was not influential when I last knew of matters beyond here.”

“What is your purpose in attacking us?” he asked, although it was mainly to buy time for other reinforcements as he mulled over that assertion.

That she knew the language meant little; it was easy to pull from someone’s mind and plenty of opportunity on the way in here he supposed, especially if she had mingled before this point.

Much more concerningly, there had been no falsehood in her words… and, while she was weaker than he was… it was not by much. If not a Dao Lord herself, then she was within touching distance of one. In normal circumstances that would be a relief, but having felt the purity of the qi in this place, he was pretty sure that you could add a half step realm onto anyone who cultivated for any length of time here, compared to someone from the Azures… or even Shan Lai for that matter.

“…”

“If our position were reversed, would it need any explanation?” she said a trifle archly.

That all but confirmed the ominous thought settled in his heart, one he was surprised more people had not raised already… Would a place like this, with a foundation like this… really be devoid of roots to any major influences?

The style of her dress was vaguely reminiscent of the more archaic, formal robes of the Shu Heavenly Clan. Though he knew of neither a Dreaming Moonsky Pagoda nor a ‘Hundred Ghosts Court’… there were plenty of older sects that had retreated into the shadows or ‘returned to their clans’ with the rise of the Second Dun dynasty.

{Falling Azure Star}

He attacked first, a martial strike aimed to sound out her swordsmanship as much as anything…

Her strike in kind shot out, but to his shock, he realised she was not wielding a curved sabre but a short polearm.

{Hyakki Hana}

Their blades met and he was forced to spin sideways as she spun under the blade and nearly took him in the side with the butt of the shaft.

{Yūrei no Hana no Yume}

All around him, the qi of the room turned turgid and lethargic, shimmering afterimages trailing her steps as the blade drifted down like a veil, blurring his awareness of the edge somehow…

-Motherless monkeys from Yama! he swore in his head, backing up rapidly, barely avoiding losing his arm in the exchange. That’s a feng shui based martial form!

-She is a Martial Lord… not a Dao Lord!?!

Blocking a second blow, fighting the sense of oddness as her blade seemed drawn to weaknesses in his guard, he repelled her in kind, using a much more defensive art.

{Twisting Azure Star}

She deflected the shimmering sword intent but did have to take a few smooth steps backwards, buying him time to check how the others were getting on…

Sheng Dian had managed to dispatch three of the grass-cloaked figures; however, the old man was still just standing there, smoking his pipe, staring at the twisting energies of the teleportation—

His heart stopped, as the old man’s shadow suddenly flowed up the walls, turning into a spectral scorpion, its form shaded with 12 glimmering red stars as the space around them solidified.

-Oh Heavenly Virgin Nuwa please save my reincarnation…

Sheng Dian and Fei Ji Shi, along with the other defenders and those rushing in from behind were frozen… and like him, they knew exactly what those spark-like stars and that constellation-like form meant…

-Twelve Spark Dao Venerate?

The teleportation behind them ruptured outwards, scattering unstable spatial qi as the shadow scorpion tore into it, tearing open the channel and casting searing red shadows around the room, even as the space at its heart slid in unnatural directions—

Everything turned fuzzy as the old man’s strike collided with something… For a brief second, he saw a shadow of… a man with a white robe, grasping for something, blocking the tail of the scorpion even as its claws caught him…

Seven blazing stars shone in the abyss of the sky, within the ruptured teleportation channel…

[… you have slain my rightful inheritor. I refuse to acknowledge any of you – better I be consigned to oblivion than return to the war above as a tool for you greedy heavens who refuse to see justice done!]

The words echoed through their surroundings, a horrifying curse that sank silently into his mind, nearly rendering him unconscious as the frozen space of the room fractured, allowing him to move, if sluggishly—

Mayumi’s polearm blow landed, and he barely deflected it, his sword, a Dao Sovereign grade artefact, losing a nasty chip out of its edge in the process.

-Even her weapon is better than mine!?!

“Do you have time to be distracted by their problems?” she chuckled, stabbing for him again, as he tried to focus on not getting killed in truly humiliating fashion.

-How is she okay? he complained, rolling away again, noting that Fei Ji was unconscious and Sheng Dian, who was much closer to the teleport than he had been, was now barely standing, a glimmering talisman shielding him as he tried to stagger away.

The three Dao Immortals from the Imperial Court were little better, one unconscious, one dead… one… he swatted her blade away again and saw that she was affected, just less than he was for some reason.

-Her robes maybe or some charm… or is her foundation just that much better?

-Mother of Heaven protect me! he cursed as he realised what was going on. Her grasp of soul law was such that she was actually able to affect his Dao Heart just with feng shui?!

Others were now entering into the hall by the other exits: several disciples from the Bright Wisdom Court casting talismans that incinerated two more attackers… while a woman from the Red Sovereigns, also a Dao Immortal Junior Elder, sent a lashing series of strikes after another invader who was blocking them as best he could with a golden-copper blade.

Hazily, through the scattering shadows and the dawn light descending through the roof, he saw the teleportation channel stabilize again… and another space… the grand hall where the alliance of venerates were supporting the ritual to open the gate. For a moment, everyone’s gaze, including his own, was forcibly twisted to see the scene: the scorpion, a shade in black and red lightning, was brutally stabbing a venerate from the Kong clan—

Space recoiled and his vision wavered as a shockwave of oppression flooded through the rift, originating from some terrible shadow-like thing that was battling the other venerates.

—The shadow behind Dao Mother Black Jade transformed into that of a majestic old man, recognisable for a brief moment in a dark blue-green hooded robe, bedecked with stars of his own, wearing a mask that obscured his face with ‘Ancestor’ marked on its brow…

-Old Venerable Blue Heaven… the principal tutor to the crown prince…

As he watched, the Heavenly Venerate from Shan Lai peered through the void and then smashed a palm into the scorpion, as if swatting a bug—

For a brief, hopeful moment, he thought that was the end of it, as the two forces collided; however, in that clash, the sparks in the scorpion’s shadow blazed, igniting with a hitherto unseen radiance in the rift, revealing all their stellar glory to block much of the blow, even as it continued to tear at the Kong clan venerate with its claws.

Unsurprisingly, the Imperial Advisor was not making much of a show of saving them and the channel faded away, space stabilizing as the old man, or scorpion, recoiled, coughing blood… not that it did them any good. Unless the ancestor finished him off, even a crippled Dao Venerate could wring every cultivator here out like bloody rags at glance, especially if they were stuck here with him, after he had just taken such a loss. No amount of precious treasures would overcome that hurdle, as Sheng Dian had already learned once.

-Fates dammit! The shock of the scene nearly proved his undoing as her feng shui form twisted his attention fractionally.

He barely blocked his opponents lashing strike—

The qi flow in the room stagnated. In the stabilized shadow of the teleportation gate, the seven very different looking stars blazed again as the channel snapped back into focus, impressing into his mind a truly inauspicious pressure that tried to work into him and bind him to it in some way…

The old man dashed forward, the scorpion-like shadow leaping for the rift and grasping something as he made one final strike—

The geometry of the hall bled iridescent fire as the Celestial Divination Hall of the Imperial Palace on Shan Lai, where 33 World Venerate Diviners were seated in a vast formation, chanting…

A vast, ghostly hand reached through both overlapping scenes into the scorpion, sending the old man sprawling—

They focused for a second time, the chanting intensifying…

There was a noise so vast it failed to register as noise, or even sensation; it was just emptiness as a white sheer plane spun wildly out of the iridescent chaos, bisecting the scorpion, bisecting the hall, twisting everything in on itself and then impossibly, twisted further still, as if crossing back out through—

…

…

…

~ Ha Yun – Wondering what is going on! ~

He hit the ground, hard enough to make his bones rattle and immediately scrambled up, looking around. There was no sign of anyone else, and his cultivation…

There was nothing… and he wasn’t injured?

Sitting up, he looked around. He was seated on stone paving, rather overgrown with the usual sharp grass, surrounded by buildings which rose on all sides, everything looking rather pale in the morning light.

-It’s mid-morning?

-What is going on here?

The buildings, with their smooth walls, hints of crumbling plaster and the colonnade around the semi-circular area he was in… looked rather like those from Valinkar… where he had first encountered the Grass Scorpions.

“Brother Ha…” he flinched, turning around to find Deng Fei standing a few metres away.

“…”

-Am I hallucinating?

-Did I get hit in the head?

“How come you are here?” Deng Fei asked. “Didn’t you leave with the earlier group?”

“Leave the camp…?” he parroted that back, his mind still spinning.

-We were sat near the three stones, within the ruins on the scorpion’s back. Ganlan and Mayumi had left to scout out what was happening with the small army of cultivators that was exploring the ruins… then there was a massive flash of white light just after dawn… and now…

-I am not dead, am I?

That was a disturbing thought.

-This isn’t some cruel joke of this place’s afterlife?

“Are you okay?” Deng Fei frowned. “The sun is not that strong this early but it’s been a hard few days…”

-Few days?

He managed to avoid saying that out loud.

“I thought you were going with Fen Zhuan and Shen Shi Tongfei to scout those points I found yesterday…” Deng Fei prompted.

“…”

His mind finally latched onto a sequence of events…

He had gone with Fen Zhuan and the others to survey another location for Bai Meifen and Brother Feng on the plains-ward side of the city, looking for the root of whatever had severed the land. They had set out early, because of the infernal heat, then about mid-morning…

-We were kidnapped by some Ur’Vash… then found by the Grass Scorpions… and when I came around it was that terrible night…

Deng Fei had gone with another group, following up one of the points in the city… having left their camp near the original complex of tombs…

-We took to staying here… well, I did… because it offered respite from those broken memories and what Din Ouyeng did to me… Deng Fei and the others stayed because it was actually easier here, once you got used to it, and the risk of being robbed of everything or grabbed by others was much lower.

“I had to come back for some stuff…” he said with a grimace. “Brother Weng should be about somewhere. I was just waiting for him.”

It was a lie, but here, with everything suppressed as it was, there was no way to tell by preternatural means unless he wanted to wait for a ‘Brother Weng’ that would not appear.

“Oi! Fei, stop screwing around. We’re done here!” a voice drifted over, rather fortuitously.

Deng Fei sighed and looked in the direction of the street beyond the tumbled-down wall. “Well, good luck with it. See you later on.”

He nodded, standing up and looking around. “I guess I’ll come out to the street. Brother Weng has been a while…”

Deng Fei nodded set off at a brisk trot, brisker than he felt like moving certainly, because he did feel like he had just been dropped a certain distance onto hard stone.

The street was indeed Valinkar, he realised, as if there had been any doubt. Two other groups besides Deng Fei’s survey group were poking around there, shifting rubble in buildings, looking for stuff.

“Shit! Don’t drop it!”

The yell made them both turn to see two outer disciples from the Four Peacocks Court trying to manhandle a large pot with ornate designs carved on it out of a building where it had probably been buried in the floor.

“You think that makes any difference?” an annoyed cultivator muttered, kicking the pot for good measure as it got stuck in the doorway.

“If they think we broke it, Senior Yong will be angry…” another grumbled.

“Then Senior Yong should come in here herself and pick this shit up,” someone else grunted.

He watched silently as two outer disciples from a different small sect dragged a small statue out of a nearby pile of rubble and wiped off the worst of the moss and lichen before storing it away. Nearby another group had started to dig in a different ruined building and had discovered floor tiles.

“Stealing ruined statues and stone pots, prying up floor tiles… What do they hope to achieve with this?” Deng Fei muttered, as they took looked on.

“Come on…!” one of the cultivators in Deng Fei’s group called from a bit further down the street.

“Sure, catch you later,” he said.

“You sure you will be okay?” Deng Fei frowned, again looking around, presumably looking for the non-existent ‘Brother Weng’.

“Yeah… I have this remember?” he held up the blade… then realised that he was wearing a grass cloak… like the Grass Scorpions.

“It’s a neat cloak,” Deng Fei chuckled. “Will have to try making one myself.”

“It does help keep the heat off,” he agreed, giving himself the once over.

-I look like a beggar, he realised with a wince.

“…”

Deng Fei gave him one last look, then hurried off. Watching him depart, it was hard not to sigh… because in those few days he had rekindled a reasonable friendship with Deng Fei… and he still had no idea if he was alive or dead after what had transpired.

Deng Fei gave him one final wave, which he returned, before looking around again… at the ruined street and wondering ‘why’ he was here… and ‘how’.

Almost unbidden, he glanced at the blade in his hand. Ganlan Meixiu had said it was fairly normal, just superior craftsmanship, a soldier’s weapon of that bygone era…

He watched the arguing group who had finally extricated the giant pot put a few of ‘their’ other finds into it and start taking it out of the town, towards the edge of the disrupted zone where the various groups and seniors engaged in carving this place up were waiting.

Nobody had been clear about what this place was… though he knew a bit now… and it made him somewhat disinclined to poke around, given what Mayumi had told him of its past history.

Watching them walk off with treasures at random made his skin itch, given what she had explained about the deathless original occupants of this place and the slumber that the suppression fields here held them to.

There was a dull boom and he flinched, jumping for a wall, looking around before realising it was just a part of a distant tower being collapsed for some reason. The pall of rising dust was already visible from where he currently was, over towards the camp-ward side of the town. Thinking back, he had heard it collapse… They had been just beyond the walls heading for the ruined villages towards the plains at this point.

Nearby there were raised shouts and curses in that direction as others realised it was very mundane and castigated those responsible.

Elsewhere, the fractious, nervous paranoia might actually be funny to watch, from a distance at least – were everyone here not waiting for the shoe to drop, as presumably were those beyond the edge of this place…

-A shoe that will drop in maybe an hour or less… Why am I back here? Not to mention dressed like a bandit robber…

He walked on, warily looking into buildings where others were not scavenging, trying to keep away from others. There was really very little remaining within most of them, even if quite a few buildings still had all of their first stories intact – testament to the strength of stone-cunning used to make them, even if quite a few interior floors were gone and roofs collapsed more often than not.

-Do I try to get out of here… do I try to find my other self… or is this just something in my head?

It was a very vivid hallucination, if it was the case.

Involuntarily, he ran a hand across a beautifully carved doorway, covered in swirling patterns somewhere between water and clouds. Elsewhere there were leaves, doorways and pillars carved like trees. Floor tiles, where they remained intact or were being dug up, tended to be strange dioramas of forests and mountains, with familiar and yet unfamiliar animals running through them. The style was somewhat similar to the ruin on the scorpion’s back, but many of those buildings looked like they imitated it… or had incorporated older buildings in that style.

“Unsettling,” he muttered out loud, moving on from that building and passing down an alleyway.

“That is somewhat undeniable,” a young woman’s voice said.

He jumped, and spun, looking for the speaker, and found a young woman with dark, almost black hair, luminous blue grey eyes and pale, if naturally beautiful features, wearing a travel-worn blue and white gown, and a broad straw hat, leaning in the doorway of one of the buildings he had walked past. He was sure he had looked in it, but lacking the augmentation of his senses that his foundation usually brought it was possible she had been in one of the further rooms inside it.

“Ha Yun, of the Ha clan,” he politely identified himself, holding up the Ha clan token. “I am part of Bai Meifen’s group?”

“I see…” she nodded pensively.

-Please believe me, he grimaced, wondering what would happen if he tried to run or if he could fend off an attacker.

“Jia Ying,” she said with a faint smile, walking out of the doorway to stand beside him in the street.

“I guess I am from Nine Moons Yaozu Valley.”

He exhaled, slightly, because The Nine Auspicious Moons was Bai Meifen’s influence, which meant that unless she was lying she was probably not going to rob or kill him. Of the cultivators here, the Nine Moons were among the most generally upstanding in behaviour that he had seen – though on reflection that might have been because most of their disciples were female.

“This place is indeed… unsettling. It feels as if the vitality of the land has been totally dispersed.”

He stared around, frowning. When it was put like that, now that she mentioned it, it did feel somewhat odd.

He almost reached for his storage ring then recalled that he didn’t have his on him anymore, so he instead pulled out a handful of oddments from the pouch at his belt, threading them together to make a very crude divination charm from scratch.

At this point, he had had quite a bit of experience with ‘beggar’s compasses’ so it didn’t take long to arrange.

As expected, it spun there, directionless, as if it were a tangle of a few bits of spirit grass, some twigs, bones and a feather… but considering the question of ‘vitality’ he could see the ‘paradoxical deathlessness’ registering in the reading he had missed before.

“I see you have some interest in feng shui,” Jia Ying murmured, observing his work.

“It’s something I learned in passing,” he shrugged, feeling a bit awkward.

To his mild relief, it registered nothing untoward about Jia Ying herself, either in terms of hidden hostility or other abnormality.

-What happens if I die…?

The compass spun, showing some rather indeterminate readings again…

His skill in reading them now was quite a bit better than it had been even a few weeks ago… but it was still nowhere close to what herb hunters within their current generation he knew… like Kun Juni…

He blinked, wondering why she had snapped into his mind quite so clearly.

“That style is according to the Han Manual,” she mused, walking past him to peer into another building.

He wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, because she didn’t elaborate on it or seem to draw any especial judgement regarding it.

He was only using it because he had never made any effort to learn the Ha clan’s own divination manual, because the Pavilion exam had only recognised the ‘Han Manual’ as the 5 star rank prescribed text. Not surprising, given it was named for the current head of the Hunter Bureau in Eastern Azure, Han Ouyeng, who had written it, as far as he was aware.

He watched as she continued over and peered through the window of a third, frowning, before turning back to him. “You have no curiosity as to why the feng shui of this place is a clean slate?” she asked.

“My knowledge of feng shui is…”

“Just a thing you picked up in passing?” she replied playfully.

“…”

He blushed involuntarily at her jibe, but kept walking after her as she continued to poke and peer at random into buildings as they made their way through the small warren of alleys.

“Huh,” Jia Ying gave a mild exclamation as she paused, peering into one of the buildings, then walked back up the narrow street a dozen or so metres and peered into the previous house.

-I wonder what she is here for, he mused, peering into the house she had just looked at, but could see nothing out of place, so to speak.

It had a narrow atrium inside the doorway with a pool, now covered with an entire layer or more of leaves, and soil spilling down from the street to cover the floor tiles. Without comment, Jia Ying came back to the building he was now standing in the entrance of and went back inside.

The space was quite ornate, he realised, more so than its rather plain exterior would have suggested, with columns and even a few carved stone panels still in place depicting various scenes: a battle, some processions, a bunch of people presenting things to a woman, a man sitting in judgement… Between them, were fourteen or so alcoves, which in times gone by likely held either statues, or maybe potted plants.

He warily followed after her as she walked down the entrance hall looking at the walls.

The alcoves themselves were decorated quite ornately – and now that he looked at the five on this side of the hall closely, each one was decorated differently. The first one had leaf motifs, the second clouds, the third flames and so on through wind, mountains, birds, rope of all things and then a strange geometric pattern.

-Just like the five statues in the catacombs below?

Jia Ying finally stopped before the geometric patterned one, her arms crossed, as he tried to recall what he could about that statue…

Something about the intensity of her scrutiny of that alcove made him want to ask her about it – and yet suddenly, he also felt that Jia Ying was not…

Gulping he took a step backwards, because the sense that came off her was… almost in defiance of the suppression as she peered at it. However, before he was even certain he had seen what he had seen, voices came from outside.

“Hey, nobody’s looked in here it seems!”

“Bah, it will just have more pots…”

“Won’t store either, I bet…”

“If a pretty senior asked you to lift her pots you would though!”

He looked across at Jia Ying, then at the door, wondering why he felt… uneasy suddenly… then glanced at the compass, which was twisting inauspicious.

-Ah…

He pointed at it, and she frowned, but before he could say anything, eight youths wearing grey and red robes embroidered with shadowy flame patterns were already walking into the hall, looking around with interest before pausing as they spotted the two of them.

“Oh, the carvings are kinda impressive here.”

“You couldn’t pry the last lot off. You won’t get those…”

“Found anything fun?” the presumed leader, a sallow-faced youth with dark hair and a gold trim on his robe, asked, walking forward and staring through at the hall with the pond.

-‘It’s a building with walls and a roof,’ he managed to avoid saying, as he hurried over towards Jia Ying.

“It’s a building, and appears to be as empty as any other. Be my guest,” Jia Ying said with a shrug, before going back to looking at the wall carvings either side of that alcove, which depicted a battle between a group of…

-Ur’Vash? He blinked, recognising them mostly by the patterns he had seen on some prisoners that the Grass Scorpions had interrogated after they met. Fighting what look like people like us?

He watched as she continued to look around, ostensibly ignoring the others who were already fanning out around the hall, poking at this and that, just like any other group exploring the ruins here.

-Am I overthinking things… getting weird divinations because of however I am here?

The right state of mind was important for them, and he was still trying to make sense of that, even if he had just sort of gone with circumstances to get here. He was just pondering that when he noted that the last two in had taken up stations near the door…

-Oh… wonderful, are they going to try to shake us down?

That was not a particularly appealing thought, given he had the blade on him.

-They could also just be keeping a lookout for others, so they don’t have to compete over this place though?

“Oh, this little brother knows some feng shui?” He failed to avoid his eyebrow twitching as a brawny youth with a wispy beard walked over and put an arm around his shoulder companionably, eyeing the crude compass in his hand. “Eh, is it some secret art? Our compasses have been worth stinking shit in here – show anything good?”

“They don’t work like that,” he said helpfully.

They didn’t: a ‘Han style’ alignment compass basically told you hot or cold, just with a lot more situational nuance – it was not an eight trigrams compass or something fancy like that.

“Ah, no… actually, I recognise this crap,” a dark-haired, bearded disciple who had now come up interjected. “Isn’t it a beggar’s compass?”

“Dresses like a beggar too… Is he one of these ones who doesn’t come back to camp?” his compatriot, who had brownish hair, added, the humour of his tone not matching his words.

“Everyone looks like a beggar after half a day here…” he pointed out, trying to remain friendly. Pulling out his Ha clan talisman, he held it up, “Actually I’m a Ha clan…”

“Hey, hey, little sister, we should explore this together…” a scholarly youth with a smooth face who had walked over to stand beside Jia Ying said, making him trail off.

“…”

Jia Ying eyed the group dubiously, then him, before shrugging and replying, “Be my guest. Lead on.”

-What is she? He frowned, worried again.

She had no weapons on her, though that didn’t necessarily mean she was unarmed.

“Given we are all here together, why don’t we go check out this side?” the muscular youth chuckled, cutting him off and starting to walk around the far side of the inner courtyard… and away from Jia Ying, he noted. “See what your divination compass can rustle up for us?”

“Be careful, though he has that talisman, we all know it’s easy to kill and steal such things here,” the one who had called him a beggar muttered.

“…”

“Aye, there are some unsavoury sorts around,” his pale-haired companion chuckled disquietingly. “Like those herb hunters who rebelled.”

“…”

There was a certain irony that he was the victim of that very incident… However, he didn’t need to look at the compass to know that this lot were just taking the piss, clearly up to no good.

“Don’t mind those two…” the brawny youth sighed, as he ushered him along, by the edge of the pond. “You know, these ruins are all so interesting,” the youth with him mused, staring around companionably. “Pity there isn’t much pretty in them, or all that valuable, it seems.”

“No, there isn’t,” he agreed, wishing he didn’t have the compass out, as it gave very much the wrong impression. “This place has been here for who knows how long. It’s almost certainly been looted a few times already.”

“…”

The brawny youth eyed him dubiously, then glanced at the compass.

“There are missing statues; the alcoves and such clearly had stuff in them,” he pointed out. “They didn’t just attain enlightenment and walk off on their own, I am sure.”

“…”

“True, I suppose,” the brawny youth agreed, casting him a sideways look that didn’t quite focus on the compass.

“Oh, so what brings you here then, ‘Daoist Ha’?” the pale-haired youth interjected.

-Great, he sighed inwardly, what can I say? If I say I was here for weird alignments, they will think I am hiding something, and if I don’t…

“…”

-I can’t even say I am trying to stay out of trouble, because then I’d be off in a field somewhere or with a big group, rather than here in the middle of a huge treasure hunt.

“I saw that this place had intact carvings and was curious about what was on them,” he said after a moment’s furious thought, that he hid by looking at the nearest carving, a scene of a procession of women carrying baskets of fruit and waving tree branches. “That and to see if there were any pots with scenes on them to be found.”

“Hah!” the youth laughed.

Off in the corner of his eye, he saw Jia Ying continuing her slow walk around the pond, considering the designs, while the scholarly youth who had suggested exploring the rest of the ruin with her meandered along, talking to her about something.

-Where is this even going? he grimaced inwardly, trying to size up the three near him.

Their manner was… somewhat intimidating, though again, he wondered if it was just his own paranoia and worry about his circumstances overtaking him. Neither he nor Jia Ying had much of anything visible worth stealing: he looked like a beggar with a simple weapon and Jia Ying, despite being beautiful, was not very ostentatiously dressed and her good looks were hidden mostly by her hat.

“Nice metal you got there,” the brawny youth added jovially, giving him a shove in the shoulder.

“It’s just a blade, nothing special,” he shrugged, working to control his nervousness.

“Hmmm… I’m a bit of a connoisseur of old weapons,” the youth grinned, holding up his own sabre, in its scabbard. “Yours looks pretty well made, I gotta say. How did you come by it?”

“Found it in an old ruin, quite a while ago,” he replied ambivalently, turning back to look at the atrium and making sure he had a pillar positioned near his back.

“Funny, looks like one a mate of mine picked up on the other side of town the other day,” the pale-haired one of the pair leaning against the pillars near the pond grumbled.

Glancing around, he saw no sign of Jia Ying… or the two who had gone down that side of the room and his heart sank.

“You know… you look awfully nervous,” the dark-haired, bearded youth frowned. “You wouldn’t be hiding something from us?”

“Give over… you think this beggar found anything?” his compatriot by the pillar spat in the water.

“Give over, you two…” the youth beside him grunted. “Don’t mind them, there was some trouble the other day… a group pushing their weight around pretending to be Red Sovereigns Sect…”

“Well, he has that Ha clan token,” his compatriot pointed out. “Odd that you’re not with the others from them, with the Jade Gate Cunts.”

“Yeah… how do you have a Ha clan token?”

“I told you… I am a member of the Ha clan,” he replied honestly.

-They can’t be stolen either. This is soul-bound… his thoughts trailed off as he wondered, suddenly, if the suppression on this place also messed with soul-bound objects.

Looking around, he tried not to let that unease overcome him even more. If he had to fight three or four on one against this lot, it was better to just cut and run… except there was the question of Jia Ying…

“Yun, we can leave now,” Jia Ying called over to him, walking out of the doorway on the far side.

“…”

The six other youths looked… nonplussed at her appearance, though the two by the pond did now look at the door she had emerged from, with a frown.

“Where is Brother Kubai?” the sallow youth asked.

“There is a basement with a bunch of stacked pots down the hall,” she shrugged. “I hardly feel like dragging pottery around all day so you can have what you want. He stayed to poke around there.”

“…”

Putting on his best smile, he started walking a bit more briskly around the courtyard, heading for the side Jia Ying was on. The sudden burst of pace caught his ‘companion’ off guard, he guessed, because he let his arm slip…

There was a moment when he felt his grip shift and he readied his own blade; however, to his surprise the youth just shrugged and let go.

“Hey… there is actually a lower level to this place…” the scholarly youth appeared a moment later, looking a bit dusty, holding a fine, blue-grey ceramic bowl painted with white and yellow figures. “Doesn’t look like anyone was here before us, either.”

“…”

The leader cast him a further look, with narrowed eyes, then nodded to the two by the pond to go around the other side.

“Where is Brother Chung, Kubai?” the one walking after him asked the scholarly youth.

“Dunno, didn’t see him. Maybe he’s in the side halls?” ‘Kubai’ suggested.

“In any case, I wish you good hunting,” Jia Ying said with a shrug. “Just watch out for scorpions.”

-Did she do something? he wondered, catching up to her and trying not to look at her.

Thankfully it was somewhat easy to look hot and flustered in the searing, muggy heat.

“You know, you must give my regards to Senior Pei,” Jia Ying mused, pausing again to admire the patterns in the different alcoves again.

“…”

The sallow youth nodded slightly.

“I heard he had some difficulties with his fiancé, though it was a bit embarrassing…” Jia Ying frowned, apparently determined to make idle small talk as she continued pondering the alcoves and the worn, carved scenes around them.

“Wasn’t aware he had a fiancé,” the bearded youth by pool muttered, casting a sideways glance at her.

Jia Ying shrugged and put her hand on one of the alcoves, running her fingers across the geometric designs as if curious about them in some way, before finally sighing and withdrawing her hand again.

“Shall we?” she asked him.

The pair guarding it glanced at the leader… who looked at her again, with a frown, then said, “Why don’t we wait for Brother Chung?”

He watched as the pale-haired youth started to walk around the pond, towards the door where Jia and the scholar had exited. The scholarly one, Kubai, who had walked back across to the main pond, frowned… not at the two of them, but at the sallow youth.

-What is going on?

He was just wondering that, when three more cultivators, dressed in nondescript dusty robes, entered the hall…

“Wh—?!”

“N—!”

He flinched backwards as one of those cultivators decapitated one of the pair by the door, splattering blood across the column. His compatriot was stabbed in the head a moment later, falling to the side and dropping his half raised sword.

“Ah, little brother, well done!” the leader said, sweeping the hall and then fixing on him.

-Shit! What! No!

He cursed in his heart, as the three swept forward, understanding that he had just been situationally planted.

“Dogshit! I told you he was fate-thrashed suspicious!” the bearded youth by the pond cursed, drawing his own blade. “What Ha clan brat with a family token is going to be wandering around alone here?”

“And misleading a lady like this…” the scholarly youth hissed, drawing his own blade and stepping forward, ostensibly to protect Jia Yin he realised, but it also split them more clearly apart…

“Aren’t you the one misunderstanding?” she muttered.

-Motherless fates go get… he stopped backing up, because all the others had drawn their weapons, effectively cutting him off, while the three by the door had fanned out blocking the exit.

“What influence do you belong to, you…?” that sallow youth, snarled at the new arrivals.

“Nine Moons!” the leader said with a laugh, dashing forward, at the same time Jia Ying did.

“Watch—!” the scholar’s shout was cut off as Jia Ying ducked past him and shoved him off balance heading for the three attackers.

Mesmerised by her movement, just like everyone else, he nearly missed the bearded youth who had also taken that opportunity to head towards him.

He had the presence of mind to dart backwards, getting a pillar between him and his attacker, whose incoming blade skittered off it, casting sparks. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw ‘Cheng’ rush out of the doorway, weapon drawn, and could only feel aggrieved in his heart over how this was playing out.

-Attacked because some bastard stopped to admire the carvings?

In the meantime, Jia Ying arrived before the leader of the new group, easily evading his blade cut, before grasping her attacker’s arm as it fell then rose and shoving the weapon right back in his face—

“Eiaaaaggggh!” he shrieked, though that still didn’t disguise the sound of breaking bone as she somehow made him twist his leg horribly.

Taking his weapon, she slammed it through his neck, and ducked under the cut of the cultivator behind him—

-Idiot!

He managed to deflect the bearded youth’s blade a second time. However, parrying the following upward blow he was sent sprawling by his attacker, barely managing to avoid losing his blade. He rolled away from a third strike.

“Aiiiiiee!”

Rising, he saw the third cultivator who had entered staggering back, his arm severed, while the second was slumped against the pillar, his guts spilling out over the floor.

“…”

“Really, did nobody ever teach you idiots actual sword forms?” Jia Ying sighed, flicking blood off the blade as he continued to back up.

“You… who are you?” the sallow youth hissed. “What influence are you really from?”

“Do you want to know?” Jia Ying replied in a tone that made it sound like a polite question, as the muscled youth and the scholar moved up behind the sallow youth, looking nervous now, but in a way it came across more as a threat.

Abruptly, two more figures dashed through the door—

“Die!” the bearded youth cut through the moment, lunging at him again, much more directly. He managed to parry, his hands shaking, and tried to stab back, only for the brawny tough to also move forward…

Their blades met with a clash, his rather nondescript weapon putting a chip in the edge of his attacker’s treasure sword. Surprised, he cut a second time and barely managed to divert his blade to the side to block the strike from the brawny youth—

-Shit…

He threw himself backwards, crashing to the ground and rolling away from the bearded youth, cursing that he had never put the time in to master actual weapons’ fighting. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that both new arrivals were stumbling backwards from Jia Ying, one grasping his throat, the other holding his arm.

Fortunately, his own assailants had to go past each other because of a column, so he was able to regain his footing and block the downward cut from the bearded youth.

Parrying the follow-on upward blow, he fought to regain his balance as his attacker cut viciously down again—

Jia Ying’s blade arrived before his did, swatting the thrust aside easily to rest against the bearded youth’s neck, barely drawing blood but forcing the brawny youth to pause his attack as well.

“—!”

“You are attacking my companion. Have eyes and see: clearly he is not with them!” Jia Ying said with a scowl, looking across the group as a whole.

“…”

“Check them for talismans,” she said to him, advancing slightly as she did so, forcing the youth back as the others all watched with grim expressions.

“Thank you, Senior Jia,” he mumbled, trying not to look as relieved as he was. However, as he did, he noted the ring on the bearded youth’s hand… which, while fairly standard… had a design familiar to the one Deng Fei wore.

-His ring is from the Pill Sovereigns? He isn’t wearing their robes… or did he just buy it from them?

He knelt by the ‘leader’ of the five and searched him, finding no talismans… only a very plain, nondescript storage ring and a pouch. Glancing inside, he grimaced as it had a dozen more storage rings, several with blood on them and a bunch of different bits of jewellery, pendants and the like.

The others were the same, another pouch with some storage rings, nondescript ring and no identifying talismans.

“No talismans, just some looted storage rings,” he reported to her, standing up and making sure he wasn’t with his back to the door… just in case.

“And you are just going to take their word that they were from the Nine Moons?” she smirked. “How many male disciples are there from Luminary Eclipse Pagoda here? Most of those who came, came with Qing Dongmei, so they are from the Silver Moon Hall.”

The scholar was frowning; however, the others looked unconvinced.

-So, rogue cultivators robbing others… or is it something more? Unbidden, the Din group who had sought him out, disguised as Sheng clan cultivators from the Azure Astral Authority, sprang to mind.

-Is someone going around trying to make it look like our faction is killing and robbing people?

With a sigh, she took off her hat, and the scholar flinched. The sallow youth also suddenly looked pale.

-So they recognise her… which means she likely is some senior…

“Let’s go…” Jia Ying said, eyeing the five behind the bearded youth, who was still sweating, his own blade shaking slightly.

She took the blade away from his neck, backing towards the entrance. He moved after her, trying not to look too nervous.

Steeping outside, he found… more bodies.

Three buildings down, there was a blood splatter on a wall and two slumped, decapitated figures – outer disciples from the Four Peacocks Court, based on their robes, so maybe part of the group he had seen digging up some floor tiles earlier.

“Here,” he handed her the pouch of rings and other items, followed by the five rings.

She glanced at them, shoved the pouch into her own and then eyed the rings.

“You don’t want one?” she asked with a half-smile.

“They are certainly marked,” he pointed out, glancing behind them again in case the group decided they didn’t want to let them go after all. “Probably soul-bound as well.”

“Ah… hmmm…” Jia Ying looked at them for a moment then picked out one, a slightly different ring with squarer edges, and passed it back to him.

He stared at it blankly.

“This one isn’t marked and isn’t one of theirs,” she said, eyeing him again. “It can be used by you.”

-Does she know? he suddenly wondered. I had not met her before this point, but I was around the camp early on, so presumably she might have seen me there… Or Bai Meifen gave out my description?

He nearly refused… then recalled that everything was going to go to hell anytime soon anyway, and took it politely. Likely, she was just doing so to ensure that she was not going to be the sole one marked for this… even if, as she claimed, they were already thieves or worse.

She eyed him for a moment and he sweated, wondering if he had just made a mistake, but she just smiled after a moment and then put the others back in her satchel.

Rounding a corner, they found more bloodshed, a group of four dead in the street, two decapitated, a third missing an arm and a fourth almost cut in two.

“Well, this took longer than I had expected,” Jia Ying mused, putting her conical hat and its half veil back on and looking around.

“What is going on though?” he pondered, noting that this appeared to be cultivators fighting each other.

“Probably a group finally decided to make a mess, either from one of the other camps, or likely to further put pressure on our group and the others exploring outside,” Jia Ying frowned.

“Did just those five do this?” he asked, doubting it in truth. The chaos was too widespread and someone would have raised the alarm.

“Probably not… they were good but there are limitations here,” Jia Ying mused, stopping at the end of a narrow street to look both ways… listening.

Focusing, he could, he realised, make out… the sound of blades clashing off to their right.

“Well, we will only know by looking, but it was the Four Peacocks Court, Myriad Herb Association and Red Dragon Pagoda – those we just met – who are poking around this ‘quarter’ as I recall.”

Shaking her head again, she started to walk purposefully off in the direction of the fighting, before he could ask further.

By the time they made it to a broad square fronting a large tumbled-down building with huge columns fronting it and a lot of carvings of rivers, people standing on the banks and sun-like symbols with crosses in them hanging over them, the melee was over, in truth. Some two dozen disciples of various central continent sects, who had been fleeing towards the perimeter and the safety of the larger groups waiting, had been slashed about pretty badly.

Looking around, he saw no talismans and no storage rings on any of them. The things they had been looting – statues, floor tiles, pots and such were scattered at random, as if they were of no import to those who had done the slaying.

“Have things actually come to a head?” Jia Ying frowned for the first time, then picked up the head of a nearby cultivator and stared at it for a moment before putting it back down on a body. “This way.”

Without waiting for him, or explaining anything, she started to briskly walk perpendicular to the location of his group, heading across the plaza, towards one of the taller towers towards the Easten end of the town.

They made their way along two ruined streets in silence. To the left and right, he heard the occasional shout or truncated scream. Through a gap in the walls, he could see quite a few cultivators had broken for safety, fleeing the town towards the hopeful safety of their seniors.

“Should we not leave as well?” he asked, catching up to her.

“There will be time for that shortly. If we leave now, it would be inopportune,” Jia Ying murmured, still walking along as if she were out for a purposeful summer stroll.

Ahead of them, there was a loud rumble and the ground shook. As he watched, shocked, the tower, the last one in the town of any real height he realised, abruptly crumbled down as someone presumably dislodged some fundamental part of its interior structure.

“Too obvious of them,” she sighed, looking equal parts irked and amused to his eyes. “Too obvious…”

He looked at the cloud of dust swirling out over the small plaza they were standing at the edge of, wondering what she meant. Around it were scattered a few corpses wearing robes that identified them as sect disciples of the Four Peacocks Court mixed with some other smaller sects and a few independent cultivators.

-Or attackers… though why did she say it was too obvious that the towers be destroyed?

From the corner of his eye, he caught motion and looked across the square to see a second group of disciples… dressed in robes of the Shu clan, hurrying out of the far street.

“Shu clan?” he asked, surprised.

-Not to mention… have I seen any Shu clan disciples before now? Skimming back through his memories of the camps, he was sure he had not… unless they arrived after I stopped going back?

The group consisted of several youths all of whom appeared younger than him, looking about warily at the carnage around them. “Ah, little sister, have you seen more of those bandits? They should have fled that way,” the youth leading the group said with a worried looking, walking towards them.

“…”

Jia Ying looked at them, seeming distinctly unimpressed.

“I advise you not to do anything rash, little sister,” another of the Shu disciples added, stepping forward. “We, the Shu, are righteous, but you should show respect. What influence do you hail from?”

He watched, hand drifting to the hilt of his blade as they fanned out, not behaving at all like ‘allies’.

-Are they just pretending to be Shu disciples? It would be easy to dress up in another sect’s robes out here…

“Nine Moons Yaozu Valley,” Jia Ying said lightly, casting her gaze around.

“Really?” one of these Shu disciples asked.

“Can you prove it?” another pressed.

Before he could relax, he saw a figure slip out of the shadows lunging for Jia Ying, who spun on the spot and deflected the blow as the five disciples all looked around wildly.

The attacker snarled and backed up, fading away into the dust of the ruins even as Jia Ying sent three arrows in rapid succession, flying into the rolling dust from the collapse.

His own paranoia saved his life: having just seen that happen to Jia Ying, he threw himself down as a sword blade hissed through the space where his head would have been and dived for his blade.

Hurriedly, he cut a second and a third time; however, each slice got nothing but air as his masked opponent, dressed in drab robes, skipped backwards easily.

“Not bad, for a brat, but you are—”

His opponent suddenly swung his sword sideways, cutting an arrow a hand’s width from his face—

Ha Yun took the opportunity and lunged with all his strength, again cutting air, which was frustrating.

“This place may suppress foundations, unlettered brat, but it doesn’t suppress experience or comprehensions,” his opponent sniggered.

Two more arrows drifted lazily out of nowhere — the youth, certainly a senior, scowled and blocked them both.

It afforded him a chance to look around even as he scrambled back, but in the still drifting dust of the collapsed tower there was no sign of Jia Ying. Three of the Shu disciples were dead and a fourth was injured, being dragged away by his compatriot.

“Hel—Ahhhhggggh—!”

His opponent scowled and turned, flitting into the dust without any further preamble.

He made his way over to the Shu disciples to check their identities, trying to keep as much situational awareness as he could, still searching for Jia Ying, to no avail. However, just before he was about to get to them, he realised there were only two…

-Shit!

The third appeared beside him, stepping out of the swirling dust, already cutting for his neck. He barely got his own blade in the way in time, barely deflecting it enough to make it miss his carotid artery, leaving a searing sense of cold, sharp discomfort as it cut the skin across the front of his throat.

Throwing himself backwards, he lashed out only to find his attacker spinning over him in a lazy cartwheel, hand reaching out—

He hit the ground so hard he was sure bones fractured.

It was a blow that should have been impossible for a mortal person with mortal limitations, based on what he understood of the field they were in, but somehow it… was what it was.

Gasping, he tried to get his blade up, fighting his own body—

His opponent had to turn his blade at the last minute, deflecting an arrow from the dust as Jia Ying finally revealed herself, standing on top of the tower, above the dust.

Without any preamble, she leapt off the tower and drifted like a graceful bird through the air, her bow swapping to a sword once more.

*Tcch*

“Motherless dog’s son!” he cursed as his assailant stamped down on his leg, turning his world blurry as he fought against the crippling pain to avoid losing consciousness.

After a few horrifying seconds, his surroundings slid back into focus, revealing his attacker slumped nearby, as Jia Ying wiped her blade off on what turned out to be the sleeve of his severed arm.

“H-how…?” the youth mumbled weakly, clawing at the ground, a pill appearing in his shaking hand.

“You can consider it karma, I guess,” Jia Ying said, waving her hand.

A knife – a piece of cutlery from a ruin, in fact – hit the youth’s hand, destroying the pill he had been about to eat.

The cultivator slumped back and stared at him… mumbling, “Brat… you—”

His attackers were forever silenced as Jia Ying opened up his throat and severed the hand with the storage ring with an expert flick, claiming that as well.

*faugh*

Jia Ying spat in disgust suddenly and kicked the body.

He had no time to worry about that though, as he held his throat, because his injury to his neck was within a few hairs of being a mortal one. He scrabbled in his pouch to get some of the healing paste, made of local herbs, that the Grass Scorpions had given him. Finally getting some on his fingers, he smeared it on the bleeding wound, and grabbed a length of cloth—

“Here, let me,” Jia Ying took the cloth and bound it around his neck, where it helped staunch the wound.

“You are lucky,” she said, eyeing him critically. “I wonder how many died here because they don’t carry such mundane medicines…”

“Yeah…” he managed to rasp, weakly, tightening the bandage a bit more. So long as he made no sudden moves, it should start to heal quite quickly.

It took a few moments for him to centre himself and get up.

“I rather think we should leave,” he added, looking around.

“Mmm,” she nodded, starting to walk across the square.

“Were they really Shu disciples?” he asked.

“No,” she shook her head.

He was about to ask how she knew, but talking and walking was difficult, and she was walking fairly briskly. The town was eerily quiet now as they made their way towards the edge of the town. On the way he saw a few other corpses scattered around, but that was about it, at least until they got to the gate.

In the middle of the courtyard plaza there, he saw a figure crouched beside one of the corpses. At first he thought they were an itinerant cultivator, until he saw that the figure was eating the severed arm of the cultivator that was lying next to it, tearing lumps of flesh from it and swallowing them with relish…

“Ah… this is going to be a problem…” Jia Ying frowned.

-You don’t say? he muttered inwardly, wondering if it was an Ur’Vash… except it looked utterly barbarous compared to any he had seen and nobody had made any mention of them eating flesh like this.

The figure stood, looking around, as they backed up into the shadows, revealing itself to be taller than the average male of the Easten Continent by almost a head – close to two and a half metres tall, in fact. It had skin the colour of mud and was daubed in bloody red symbols. The rags it wore… were not in fact rags but… flayed skin.

He stared at the symbols, which, improbably, he recognised…

“Blood Eclipse Cult?” he managed to strangle the utterance to a miniscule whisper.

“You know them?” Jia Ying murmured.

He nodded mutely, recalling the stories told of events from 100 and 150 years ago. There had been a lot of unpleasantness with several mysterious cults that had arisen at that time – the ‘Blood Eclipse Cult’ was the name they had gone by… and their symbol… was the same evil red eye-like glyph now emblazoned on the flayed skins the Ur’Vash wore.

He pushed himself further back into the shadows as the demon drew a knife and, with a few expert cuts, cut open the dead cultivator, tearing off their clothes and then proceeding to rapidly skin the body with a practised ease that made his skin crawl.

They watched in horrified silence as it eyed the result, then rolled the skin up meticulously and put it in a pouch on its back, before turning to stare at another nearby corpse, not having noticed either of them as far as he could see.

Silently, they both backed away, down the street, and then, when they had gotten about a hundred metres, sprinted for the stairs on the wall. Even as he ran, something settled in the back of his mind, like a dull shadow.

Not daring to look, he ran faster, taking care not to bob his head too much as he felt blood trickle from the wound down his chest. Scrambling up the steps behind Jia Ying, he was suddenly struck with a sense of foreboding horror as something tried to grasp his legs.

He stumbled, and realised she had already passed from view, then, disorientated, understood what was happening…

-Feng shui isn’t suppressed here… Is this some kind of feng shui formation?

His momentum just about allowed him to reach the wall top, but there was still no sign of Jia Ying.

-Where did she go? he wondered, trying not to succumb to panic, as he stumbled across the distance of the dilapidated wall top, even as the sense of clawing terror continued to try and drag him back…

With a last gasp, he managed to throw himself off—

He hit the water with a flat splash, groaning at the horrible pain it instilled in his neck. Fighting through the blurry pain… praying that there was no horrible predator in the water, he managed to reach the bank, mainly thanks to his extant physical condition and pure terror—

A hand grasped his arm and he was bodily hauled up. Reflexively he stabbed at whatever it was—

“Hey… careful!” Jia Ying, bedraggled, swatted his hand aside and finished pulling him up the bank and then over a tumbled down stone wall.

“Sorry,” he rasped, fighting dizziness and amazed he had not dropped the blade, truthfully, having been barely aware it was in his hand.

She shook her head, and he rolled over, looking back behind them.

The figure was squatting on the wall… holding a—

He shoved her down and ducked them both into the shadow of the wall, towards the figure, recalling a certain valuable lesson of his martial teachers in the Ha clan, even as the spear was released. It shot over his head, missing him by bare centimetres and impaling itself in the ground—

The figure stood a few paces away, holding the spear and grinning at him with pitch black eyes. The stains of blood around its mouth were like an evil grin painted onto its thin, gaunt face. Now that he was this close, he could see a red circle interlocked with a black circle on its forehead.

“…”

Both of them stared at it… Even Jia Ying seemed shocked at how it had teleported to the spear when all cultivation was purportedly suppressed.

It lifted its spear, and she shot at it, fast as a viper, even as he followed after her, hoping that there was some trick there…

-I arrived in the suppression somehow… so maybe there are loopholes?

The demon grasped the spear, which now that he looked at it, had Imperial Common lettering on the blade.

-Motherless dog-son… it’s an artefact it got off some idiot!

It swiped at them both fairly lazily; however, the blow somehow slid past Jia Ying as if she were a ghost, arriving before him.

Gritting his teeth, he cut for the area below the hafting, hoping that the force would repel them—

He stared dully as his blade splintered the shaft of the spear and he nearly fell on his face, such was the effort he had put into the strike. Jia Ying used the opening to stab it in the side, opening up a vicious wound, which only made it kick her away.

The Ur’Vash discarded the spear and, ignoring Jia Ying, grabbed for him and his weapon instead with a greedy expression.

He barely managed to roll away, its hand tearing off a chunk of his wet grass cloak, its claw-like nails shredding the robe beneath and leaving several nasty gashes across his shoulder.

A wild sweep made it step away as, not for the first time since coming on this horrible trial, he suddenly regretted not spending far more time practicing hitting things physically with weapons. Even in the Yin Eclipse Mountains, it was possible to use some qi, and ‘intent’ was fairly unhindered. He focused his mind and tried to cut out with his intent—

It did nothing, as expected, and the Ur’Vash physically kicked him, sending him sprawling in the waist-high grass of the fallow field they were now in.

“Weak,” it snickered, in flawless Easten. “You are both weak, little humans…”

Once, he would have been shocked at that, but now, he just cut at it… trying his best to ignore the sense of clawing darkness on his limbs—

-Jia Ying?

It ignored another cut from her and swatted his strike out of the way with the back of its hand, before throwing a flayed skin at him with a smirk—

He cut it, and in that instant saw… Ling Luo’s face.

Before he realised what he was doing, panic and rage grasped him like a puppet and he was screaming and attacking it. The demon danced back and threw another skin, which had Kun Juni’s face on it, he realised, and which wrapped around him with a bloody *thwap* tangling his movement for a moment.

In that moment, as it was about to strike, Jia Ying arrived behind it, stabbing the blade through its stomach, cutting viciously sideways, only for it to grab her by the hair and toss her down beside him… then pause and stare back towards the town—

An arrow smashed into it, sending it sprawling. The Ur’Vash rolled up, snarling, tearing the coppery-gold tipped arrow out, and backed away rapidly, looking between the two of them and the distant wall…

Still trying to disentangle himself from the two, horrible, grasping skins, he saw her skip backwards, pale-faced, cutting at its arm.

On the wall was another figure, which now leapt easily off it and strolled forward across the grassland, its stride eating up the distance with disturbing ease. It was obviously male, completely naked beyond a face mask in the shape of a… fox and ties of fur around its arms and legs. In one hand, it carried a net, made of… strands of brown hide, while in the other was a wicked bone blade shaped from the femur of some spirit beast in all likelihood.

The Ur’Vash backed up again, took one cursory glance at them and then fled in the direction of the trees and the distant valley wall. Disentangling himself from the two skins, he realised with a start that they did not belong to Ling Luo and Kun Juni and, in fact, both skins were now back in the grasp of the figure who was rapidly retreating.

“Shit, may your eighteen…” Jia Ying cursed, pushing herself up, looking pale, and immediately grabbed him by the back of his robe, dragging him away from both the Ur’Vash and the new arrival for a few paces until he found his footing.

Fuelled on pure adrenaline, he tore after her, aware from the corner of his eye that the new arrival was looking in their direction, considering them and the demon. He exhaled slightly as it bent its passage away from them, to chase after the demon—

He never even saw the net get thrown. Before he knew, it was already falling, descending over the whole area they were in, impossibly large all of a sudden.

“How are they able to…?” Jia Ying gasped as he scrambled away from it.

It hit the ground and melted away, reappearing in the figure’s hand a moment later.

The figure eyed the net in its hand, then cast it up again. This time he saw it travel, much faster than was natural, the world twisting around…

Jia Ying cursed and something around them shifted subtly, making him realise that the net was doing something with feng shui, just as her sword strikes had probably been. It landed all around them and he desperately cut at it… and found to his shock that his blade easily tore it apart and it scattered.

“…”

“Well that’s handy,” Jia Ying grimaced, glancing at him.

Even as he was trying to process that… he saw another group ahead of them, dressed in the robes of the Argent Hall, spot them, point and then start running hurriedly in the direction of the camp.

The fox mask figure waved a hand and the net returned to its grasp, unharmed, before its hand moved again—

They both dove down below a wall, only to hear the miserable, distant screams of the other group, who had not been as lucky as they were caught by it.

Keeping as low as he dared, and trying to take as much care as he could, he followed after Jia Ying as she dashed through patches of scrubland and around rocks in the direction of the plains… and then threw herself flat.

Diving down beside her, it took him a moment to see what had made her take cover… parallel to them, some 500 metres away on the edge of the scrubland where the jungle valley faded way, three hunched figures were just about visible… riding armoured spiders the size of cows…

“They are outside the suppression?” he hissed.

“Looks that way,” she nodded.

-At that distance we are well outside easy visual range, given the rise we are hidden by, he guessed. Though the important thing is they are not coming our direction.

Behind them, the miserable screams of the other cultivators were still echoing across the grassland, a litany to invisible torment avoided by pure good luck and the misfortune of others…

-Assuming this isn’t all some crazy hallucination caused by whatever that white flash of distortion was…

Slowly, he followed Jia Ying as she crept back, noting with some relief that a fairly stiff wind had picked up, making minor disturbances probably quite opaque in the haze of the ancient field systems, for some ten minutes before it was clear that there were no more Ur’Vash or whatever the other had been.

-The Grass Scorpions must be around here somewhere as well? he wondered, absently touching the wound on his neck and wincing at how cold it felt. We are on the right side of the city… but we were almost two miles out…?

Jia Ying had also stopped, he noticed. She looked almost as bad as he did, blood running from her nose and a vicious gash down her arm that she was smearing some pale blue paste into.

Grimacing, he fumbled in his satchel and passed her the stuff he had been given. She eyed it, then nodded and took some, smearing it on her other wounds.

“Why… did you not just run?” he asked at last. “You could have escaped much more easily without me.”

“I dunno… I guess I just don’t like seeing people die stupid deaths they don’t deserve,” she said after a moment. “It’s not something a kid like you would get at your realm…”

-A kid… yep, she is a senior alright, he thought wryly.

“Also… you are doing good work for Meifen and Dongmei…”

He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at that… though the look she gave him lingered long enough that suddenly he had to wonder, Is she sticking with me because she knows I should be somewhere else right now?

-How real actually is this? Am I going insane somehow? Is this like what happened before and bits of circumstances are slotting together in my head for some reason?

With a sigh, he pulled out the divination compass. It spun bizarrely as the last one had, until he turned it on himself and winced. The readings were… he considered how multifariously inauspicious what he was seeing was, then just put it away again with a sigh.

“That bad?” she chuckled.

“You can check your own compass and see…” he grimaced.

“I don’t need a compass to tell that this plan of theirs to explore this place has just gone to shit!” she grinned.

…

In the end it was almost sundown, and his nerves were utterly shredded by the time they had worked their way back around half the perimeter of the town to the eastern gate. In the distance, about two miles away, he could just make out people moving on the rocky outcroppings below the ridge, where the main camp was… however, as they watched, two groups came jogging out of the distant town, looking largely unscathed.

No, that wasn’t quite right, he realised. They were keeping a watch, and moving really rather briskly. Nobody ran in this heat, not after the first ten minutes…

“So what now?” he asked, watching one group go past a hundred metres or so away.

“We just wait and walk back,” she chuckled, skirting around another wall. “No point in getting shot at by a bunch of looters for the sake of being hasty after running away from all that. We should just make our way across and then go through when no one is around.”

Raising a hand in agreement, because what she said was very rational, he followed her over the wall, and put his foot straight into a pot that was lying hidden in the grass, nearly going sprawling.

Staring at it, he laughed weakly inside and picked it up. It was jade green and made of some kind of crystal, of all things. Looking around, he saw several other bits and pieces like it scattered in the dirt… along with a curious glint of dull greenish-copper metal… just visible in the low angle of the setting sun.

“…”

Jia Ying stared around… then at him, then simply shook her head.

Casting quietly about, they checked around the walls, taking care not to rise above the line of sight of the shrubs that were obscuring them both from the outcroppings in the distance.

It took only a few minutes of poking around to turn up a pile of broad metal spearheads. They were a bit tarnished, but the metal, once they scraped off the dirt, appeared to be in good condition, just in need of a bit of a polish.

“These metal trimmings…” Jia Ying frowned, staring at one of the corroded bits of metal…

Looking at it, he had to work to think why it was familiar… before making the connection to a wheel fitting.

A few minutes more scavenging proved that right… not in the way either expected.

At first, in the evening sunlight, he thought it was another crate of metal, scattered under a bush, but closer examination showed it to be the remains of two skeletons, both with a faint dull metallic sheen to their bones.

The adult skeleton, which was well buried in the loam, with roots growing through it, had bones bronze-coloured, and three long metal arrow heads lying in it in such a way as to suggest it might have been shot in the back. Right next to it, almost hidden by the tangle and half-sheltered by the adult, was what he was sure was a child’s remains, barely silvery in colour, corroded and decaying – an arrow through the back of its skull.

Nearby, he found a dull matte-bladed metallic dagger with a hilt made of the same green-coppery metal carved with a rather serpentine design.

The blade, when he wiped the dirt carefully off, had a set of flowing runes running along it that were a bit like a constellation of circles and lines, each one with a little moon rune-like symbol in it that looked like a peony flower.

“…”

Jia Ying, who had arrived beside him to stare at the skeleton, then the dagger… had a complex expression on her face.

~ Ling Yu – Ling Estate, Blue Water City ~

“Baaaah, baaaaah, baaaah!”

“Get them!”

“Look out! Don’t harm…!”

“Which one is Ju Pei!”

“Young Master Fu!”

“Noo… don’t go near that stall!”

“Who cares, just lock all of them down before one of them accidentally gets—!”

“BAAAAAAH!”

Ling Yu, seated in the reading room of the Ling Estate in Blue Water City, watched the recording of nine sheep engaging in a drunken street brawl being chased by various maids, hangers on and terrified bystanders for the 20th time or so…

“It just doesn’t get old… ever…” she sighed, looking at her idiot brother waving his forelegs and trying to punch a sheep-disciple from the Jade Gate Court in the head.

The recording ran on, and then everyone in it shifted and, with a colourful puff of smoke… turned into a chicken. Little Blue, sat on the edge of the back of the couch, fell off, having overbalanced from waving his leaves too much.

“I can’t believe that there is actually an artefact that does this…”

“They are not common,” Grandpa Baisheng muttered, from where he was flicking through a stack of playing cards, frowning occasionally. “Many years ago, there was an evil priest who possessed one and turned several villages and even a town on the northern continent into chickens, selling them fairly widely before his cult was caught…”

-Euwww, she shuddered inwardly at that thought and the unspoken implications… and what that might do to your tribulations.

“How this one got into the hands of that… Di Ji poses quite a few questions. Nobody knew that the Imperial Court had one.”

“This isn’t… that artefact?” she asked, watching her brother try to claw another chicken to death.

“No, that one was destroyed, and incapable of a feat like this… Half a city turned into various animals, nearly irrespective of realm?” Grandpa Baisheng mused, putting aside the cards and starting to consult various papers again.

She could only nod at that. The day’s chaos was probably going to live long in the memory… though probably not in many people’s good memories. Almost a million people had been turned into sheep, then chickens, then octopi… though by the third change, it was only the weaker cultivators and genuine mortals affected. Di Ji had personally offended a Venerate from the Tai clan, and apparently turned both that person and the Lady Kai Lan into foxes… in public.

“How did he get away?” she sighed.

That was the question of the hour, because a huge number of people were out for blood, and there was no sign of the perpetrator at all once the chaos from him collapsing the personal abode of an old Ha ancestor had been tidied up.

Watching the recording for a few more moments, she muted it and stretched, then picked up Little Blue and gave it a hug, because the truth, terrible as it was, was that she was bored.

Unlike her brothers, who were both deeply unhappy at the restrictions put on them in the aim of political expediency, the fact that the Ling clan in Blue Water City was basically hiding under a rock didn’t particularly bother her; however, the circumstances were just conspiring to ensure there was very little to do.

You couldn’t cultivate in the city at the moment… Well, you could, and she had tried, but the qi was so chaotic from whatever had transpired earlier, that it just gave her a splitting headache. She had practiced martial forms for a bit, but given the situation and her other worries… and a lack of anyone to practice with, it was not very edifying… Because she never left Grandpa Baisheng’s side, courtesy of that early attempt to ‘invite’ her to the palace, there was really no opportunity to do much of anything else, either.

“You are restless,” he observed with some amusement.

“No… I am not,” she pouted.

“You are,” the old man gave an amused sigh, setting aside the papers to look at her.

“…”

She flounced back and stared at the ceiling, wondering why she felt so… restless.

“Why do I feel so unfocused?” she asked after a moment’s consideration, because she could either stew about it… or… just ask the only person likely to know.

“Haa…” As if he had seen through her, which he probably had, Baisheng wryly shook his head. “It is because you are nervous, and worried, and because the qi in the whole city is chaotic… probably beyond here actually, thanks to that collapse. You have never experienced this degree of alignment disruption.”

“Wait… this is because of this chaotic qi?” his answer, which was unusually forthright, made her sit back up in surprise.

“No!” he laughed. “It is because of you, but the qi is not helping… and it will only get worse when the wet season arrives properly. This is an important lesson, in a way. Many would not have asked… For that alone, you deserve the answer.”

She shuddered involuntarily at that thought.

-This is going to get worse?

The weather had already been spun like a child’s top because of what had transpired in Yin Eclipse, but now that the season had turned, you could feel it in the air. It was hot, humid and wet… and now all the ambient alignments for almost a thousand miles in any direction of Blue Water City were twisted by what had transpired earlier and qi was…

She focused on what was in her body, pulling out a swirling orb of misty water qi that spun for a few seconds.

“Not bad…” Baisheng acknowledged.

“Gah!” she released it as her vision turned slightly blotchy from the strain.

“I just feel weak…” she complained after her vision cleared.

“You are weak,” he pointed out. “There is no shame in that, given your age and the circumstances beyond these walls.”

“But I shouldn’t be!” she scowled, sitting up again, even as Little Blue gave her a rather leafy pat of sympathy and manifested a few images that indicated how it shared her frustration.

“How are you able to do that, when I cannot?” she asked Little Blue Moon.

“Because it is a ginseng, and they thrive on this kind of pressure,” Baisheng elaborated, having gone back to shuffling through the cards. Holding Little Blue up, she sighed again.

She knew that, having spent enough time with Sana to get a good grasp of how many exotic plants like her ginseng advanced. Little Blue’s method was somewhat familiar yet, at the same time, instinctual and quite alien when you started to poke at the specifics – the ginseng didn’t have a core, or a dantian, and its whole form made up its foundation in a way that was rather similar to physical cultivation.

“If you look after it right, it might make some surprising gains…” Baisheng added.

Sighing, she gave Blue Moon another hug and turned back to the recording, which had now progressed, silently, to the point where most of those afflicted in the street were starting to temporarily lose themselves. The transformation had been total, apparently, though those with stronger foundations and higher realms had been able to resist for longer.

“How did he escape?” she asked again after a moment’s consideration, her mind turning once again to Ji Tantai… Di Ji… whoever he really was, beyond the villain of the hour.

“Rather than that, it’s more a question of how he apparently walked into the Myriad Blossoms teahouse without a care in the world,” Baisheng mused.

“Lord Baisheng,” an old man, one of the trusted servants of Grandpa Baisheng, knocked on the door and entered, carrying a pile of documents, then saw her and bowed again.

“Young Lady Ling.”

She nodded politely to him and went back to watching the follow-up of her younger brother furiously trying to peck a very harried maid that had just grabbed him out of the ruins of a street counter.

“Ah… Huan,” Baisheng sighed. “What is it now?”

“Word has come through that Young Lord Li Wei will be coming to Eastern Azure.”

“Does he want to see me?” Baisheng asked.

“Yes, he has a letter of introduction from his father and hopes you will help support the Ling clan in the investigation of—”

“Not interested. They can go fishing for reality-eating crayfish on their own tab,” Baisheng cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“Of course, Lord Baisheng, I shall… diplomatically extend that you are focused on matters regarding the security of the Ling clan here,” the old servant murmured.

“Who is that… and reality-eating crayfish?” she asked, sitting up and muting the recording again, because that did sound interesting.

“Li Wei? A scion from Southern Azure’s Ling clan,” Baisheng explained. “As to the crayfish, that relates to the firmament eruption that has occurred… presumably because of the fallout of those idiots on Shan Lai forgetting their age. It is not something…”

“Booo…” she pouted again. “At least tell me what it is. It sounds…”

“You know the Star Ocean?” Baisheng said.

“Of it, yes,” she nodded.

“Well, the special people on Shan Lai just tore a hole straight into it, though thankfully, only exposing a tidal pool, it appears—”

“Oh—”

She was just about to ask more when a door slamming in the next room cut her off.

“Oh what now…?” Grandpa Baisheng sighed, glancing at Huan who just shrugged.

“You cannot go through, Young Master!” a protestation came from the next room.

“Lord Baisheng is busy—!”

“HERE YOU ARE!” her brother stalked into the room, followed by two harried-looking maids.

“You have a recording, I know you do!”

“…”

Grandpa Baisheng eyed the interloper, while the maids bowed, looking both embarrassed and annoyed.

The recording had vanished even before anyone else had entered the room. It was probably still there, she was sure, but it was now hidden by Grandpa Baisheng, who was the one who had procured it for her in the first place.

“—Eh… but it was…”

“I was sure I asked not to be disturbed?” Grandpa Baisheng asked her brother with a faint scowl.

That warning didn’t seem to deter him, which was par for the course, because her brother was arrogantly oblivious to the point where it was almost an innate art. It was almost a mystery to her how he had grown up to be so spoilt, but only just. The combination of an excellent spirit root and everyone, even your own parents, telling you that you were amazing and destined for great things for years on end no matter what you do… was a rather potent one.

“Lady Ling,” the maids bowed as her mother arrived, probably having been told that her son was about to annoy the person keeping both world superpowers out of their family estates.

“Sir Baisheng…” her mother smoothly pulled her brother away and looked around.

“Mother, she has a recording…” her brother scowled, an expression that only deepened when he then noticed Little Blue making a rude symbol with a branch.

“…”

Her mother eyed her dubiously, then noted the old servant holding the package of documents, and looked around dubiously before focusing on Grandpa Baisheng again with something approaching an actual ‘winsome smile’.

“I would ask that you at least…”

“Refused,” the old man shook his head. “The boy was out when he should have been here, and you let it happen. Allowing them to go out to a teahouse like that… be glad the worst that happened was that he got turned into a sheep for a few hours!”

“…”

Her mother opened and shut her mouth, and then sighed, not looking at her.

“Old man, you have no…” her brother was cut off by her mother, who smiled awkwardly and dragged him back out of the room.

“Many apologies, Lord Baisheng,” one of the maids bowed deeply.

Grandpa Baisheng just waved for them to leave, which they did with alacrity.

“Old am I?” Grandpa Baisheng muttered, after they had closed the doors behind them.

Little Blue, who had made it back onto the sofa back, gestured to imply that he was very stately and impressive…

“It’s a sad day when a little ginseng has better character than a scion of the Ling clan,” the old man sighed.

Little Blue waved its branches and pointed in various directions, visibly implying by various qi manifestations that that was an insult to all plants.

“Probably I will have to hold onto it,” the old man added, speaking of the recording.

“It’s fine,” she shrugged. “I am not going out of the estate anyway, certainly not now.”

“Indeed,” Grandpa Baisheng nodded, then looked again at the stack of documents. “That’s quite the pile, Huan.”

“It is, but these are trying times,” Huan agreed, with an apologetic grimace. “Regarding your inquiry over Di Ji… and Ling Luo, the Imperial Court Envoy—”

“—Denies everything, loudly, with extra emphasis on how it’s a plot and everyone has it in for them?” Baisheng muttered.

“Quite,” Huan agreed. “Though there was also a lot of swearing involved, along with allusions that it was all the fault of the Azure Astral Authority and the old Hunter Bureau Administration. They have also released a formal statement to be read thrice daily by all righteous influences that swears by heavenly oath that this was all a plot, a slander and a stratagem to discredit them.”

“They actually swore an oath like that?” she asked, surprised.

“Making facades others will buy is almost their innate art,” Baisheng said, looking amused now. “It will not fool those who know them well, but old men like me are not their target.”

“But how could that be a binding oath?” she frowned, turning that over in her head.

“Perspective,” Baisheng sighed.

“Not all such declarations need be ‘binding’,” Huan added. “There is a lot of nuance in the use and deployment of them, especially when old fellows like us get in on the act. The oath itself is usually secondary to the circumstances it is trotted out in.”

“Indeed,” Baisheng nodded. “What of the reality of it?”

“Near as I could learn, this does appear to have caught them entirely off guard, even if all the parts that make it up are… what they are,” Huan sighed. “In any case, the ducal palace has been obliterated, and there is unlikely to be a new duke sworn in for some time… though certain persons have been approached.”

“Oh?” Baisheng frowned.

“Lord Ling Fei was asked, informally,” Huan signed.

“Who else?” Baisheng mused, sitting back in his chair again, staring at Huan pensively.

“The head of the Deng clan and Sheng Erlai are among the notable others.”

“It will be Sheng Erlai,” Baisheng mused. “A puppet for all, and a ruler for none.”

“That was my thought as well. Lord Man is too powerful, and the Deng head too political. Sheng Erlai, by comparison, is a well-liked Dao Lord without much baggage here, but who lacks experience. The Sheng clan will see him as a useful face, especially with other factions in Shan Lai having fallen on this province like a proverbial plague of iron bricks, while the others will see him as someone who can be pushed about or worked around for their own agendas.”

The old servant shuffled the papers and put them down on the table, taking the next scroll with a further sigh.

“It’s mostly secondary to the other problems though…”

“Go on?” Grandpa Bai sighed, as she also got up to look at them, curious now.

The fact that all the interesting things tended to get sent past Grandpa Bai was one reason she was quite happy to just waste time here.

“Well… there has been a… hmmm, well they call it an ‘issue’ with the great teleportation gate going into this new shard—”

“That’s a funny way to describe a full-blown collapse,” Baisheng said, leaning back and looking amused as he pouredhimself a cup of wine from the jar nearby.

“Actually, it has not collapsed, but there was a sustained aperture error, mostly on the other side it seems,” Huan mused.

“Something tried to come through,” Baisheng mused. “I saw part of what it was, even at that distance, when the wards broke. It was about what I expected as well.”

“Expected…?” Huan frowned.

“An old thing… ancient history best left to moulder in a library never seen by younger eyes,” Baisheng grunted. “This dynasty is not the only one to have had its share of ‘why us’ moments with that place.”

Not for the first time, she found herself wondering just how old Grandpa Baisheng was. He was… ancient, but occasional comments about the past dynasty… which she had gone and checked up on in the library because there was nothing else to do here, told her that that was hundreds of thousands of years ago. She had asked; however, he had just laughed and said that age was a thing not worth worrying about beyond the Immortal Realm.

“Anyway, they managed to send a second group through. Great Elder Quanshun and Great Elder Akaris from Southern Azure…”

“As amusing as it is to see the other arms of the clan suddenly recall we exist, they can send their own scions. None from this branch are going while this old man sits here,” Baisheng said flatly.

“I took the courtesy of already sending such a reply,” the servant nodded. “However, I thought you should be aware, just in case.”

“Very good… and the other matters?”

“Well, there is the matter of this rumoured ‘Wisdom Scrip—’”

“Forget about that,” Baisheng said flatly. “It will be nothing but trouble we do not need. As I said, this dynasty is not the first to have a profound ‘why us’ moment regarding that fate-thrashed mountain.”

“Very good,” Huan nodded. “There are, however, certain parties, some of the older ancestors, who do feel…”

“No,” Baisheng said flatly.

“They will be unhappy…” Huan sighed. “Many see this as an opportunity to either impress…or worry that we will lose ground?”

“Lose what ground!” Baisheng laughed nastily. “No. Deal with it as necessary but we are not getting involved in that mess.”

“Very good. There is also the matter of the new administration of the Hunter Bureau… It is, frankly…” Huan trailed off and shuffled a few papers.

“Not used to Yin Eclipse?” she chipped in with a smile.

“Even the young lady sees their problem,” Huan said with an eye roll. “Indeed, they are not.”

“I would have thought those old elders would handle matters?” she frowned.

“Yes, however, it has been millennia, tens of millennia in many cases, since any of them took any immediate interest in the wider, day-to-day organisation of this province,” Baisheng mused, looking at her with an amused smile. “Anyway, what does that have to do with us, specifically?”

“It doesn’t, not directly, but the cost of materials has rapidly risen. We have our own supplies of course, but…”

“When you say rapidly?”

“High quality spirit vegetation – that is, those from the eight star grade and above – are now selling for an Earthly Jade… per kilo… as an example.”

“…”

“Ah, that will be an issue. I take it the alchemy and refinement economies of the province are suddenly undergoing some turmoil?” Baisheng mused.

“The availability of some previously common goods is causing an issue, yes,” Huan agreed, flipping through the scrolls. “Higher grade beast cores, a staple of the ease of living in this season… also very short in supply suddenly, not to mention the wider economic turmoil has required a great investment in short term security… given the losses incurred when the Duke was deposed.”

“How much?” Baisheng sighed.

“Uh… we will probably need an extra two Dao Jades to cover the outlay,” Huan frowned.

“Hasn’t it only been a few days?” she asked, confused.

“Yes, however, the Hunter Bureau has been eviscerated and the politics of the regional pavilions were already rotten to the core before this. With the chaos now gripping Blue Water City and the devastation of West Flower Picking town, the main influences are all suddenly sitting on their stockpiles,” Huan said, turning back to her. “Also, our stockpiles are rich in high quality goods, but a lot of the mid and low grade stuff was being used in clan industry…”

-Which means it was seized or is otherwise unavailable, she realised.

“What do they think I am, a walking treasury?” Baisheng grumbled, pouring himself more wine. “Some more can probably be spared. I take it that is not all?”

“No,” Old Huan frowned, shuffling through the papers again. “There are a few other minor clan matters, that Lord Fei is dealing with mostly: the casualty list for the aftermath of the abode collapsing into Blue Dragon Square has been written out and… mostly published… though it is a very strange list, hence why Lord Fei wanted you to look at it.”

“Very well, leave it here…” Grandpai Bai sighed again, taking a further gulp of his wine.

“Oh, and there is a personal message for you… from a Lady Yuan Leng?”

Grandpa Baisheng nearly spat out the wine.

~ Jun Han – West Flower Picking Town ~

“Sorry… it’s a supply issue…”

-If I hear that one more time today, I will… cry maybe, assuming Ning Sora[2] doesn’t first, Jun Han sighed, watching Yuan Mai[3] look around the shop, clearly attempting not to swear.

It was unusual to Yuan Mai, who was usually very inscrutable in her role as Mrs Leng’s maid and general estate overseer quite so animated, but the day had been… challenging so far.

“I understand your frustration, Miss Mai, but please understand our position as well.”

“This was stuff we had ordered… weeks ago… it was held for convenience here. It was already paid for,” she said with somewhat disturbing sweetness of tone.

“We could—” one of the shop assistants muttered, only to be waved into silence.

“The space it was being stored in was paid for…” Yuan Mai added. “Paid for… and you are telling me you sold it?”

“Look, we have to make a living… Times are difficult… and the noble from the Quan family was very generous… and it was unclear if the owners were alive.”

“…”

Yuan Mai narrowed her eyes and the barrier around them dissipated, meaning everyone else in the shop could now hear what was said.

The shopkeeper of the ‘Bounteous Herb Emporium’, who was new, had the good grace to try and look awkward, but clearly wasn’t going to back down. If he had just agreed to compensate everything, probably that would have been fine, but the problem was one of status and aspiration. The shop appeared to have acquired the patronage of the Quan family, one of the newly settled noble groups, and Mrs Leng was not a ‘noble’ and thus not a client who got precedent in the new owner’s eyes.

In a way, he could see the logic behind what the shop owner had done – to them, protection right now was very important, and the Quan clan provided that. In his mind, no doubt, any allegations made about lost goods or broken contracts could just be buried or have the Quan name waved around… It was just ‘unfortunate’ for the shopkeeper, though likely fortunate for everyone else screwed over by him, that defrauding Mrs Leng was not so easily solved.

Next to him, Ning Sora was also looking like she didn’t know whether to curse or just slip out the door so as not to be the witness of a crime.

“Thirty nine earthly jades,” Yuan Mai mused, looking around a final time, likely totalling up the value of their losses. It was a lot of spirit stones, and the herbs held in the special garden the previous owner had nurtured were rare.

“Eh?” the shopkeeper looked confused, which told him that the idiot had likely undersold them to the Quan clan as well, by a large margin.

“Um… Miss Mai—” one of the longer term servants tried to speak up.

Shaking her head, Yuan Mai spun on her heel and walked back out of the shop, without bothering to explain, past the several other customers who had been looking on with awkward expressions.

“Never do business with this family again,” Yuan Mai said to Ning Sora as she passed them. “Or sell anything to them.”

“…”

The shopkeeper opened and shut his mouth, while the two other sellers, who were longer-term employees, both had slightly sickly expressions on their faces.

-And those are the faces of employees who have to tell the new owner he just annoyed Mrs Leng.

It was that ‘or sell anything to them’ that would have the older employees sweating, because he had come to realise that Mrs Leng was in fact one of the major influence brokers in the town, even now, and to a degree which he had really been oblivious to when he was still nominally working with the Military Authority…

They followed her out, into the hot afternoon rain, taking out their own umbrellas.

“I hate rain,” Yuan Mai muttered, shaking out her own umbrella and looking along the street.

“I hate this rain,” Ning Sora added, fanning herself.

The shop had had wards specifically designed to make it a pleasant temperature, not uncommon in a place where 4 months of the year could be like this.

In the distance, beyond the roofs of the town, there was a shimmering flash of blue-white light.

*KRACKOOOOOM*

The vast peel of thunder shook a few roof tiles off, though only those from out of town flinched.

“So… nowhere has any sprit vegetation sellable in bulk above the mid-grade,” he frowned.

“Unless we start to go to less reputable stores,” Ning Sora nodded.

“We are compiling a new list of those as we go,” he noted with some resigned amusement.

“We are, though it will save money for sure,” Yuan Mai muttered.

Really, this situation had been predicted, even before they set out earlier, but that just made confirming it all the more prescient, given the morning’s turmoil. To call it that was fairly charitable, as more reports filtered in, honestly. Insanity was a better word, and there were probably as many versions of those events as there were people telling them.

There had been a huge incident in Blue Water City, the Ducal Palace had been obliterated by a spatial collapse, half the city had been turned into sheep for a half an hour… and there was some kind of firmament eruption between Eastern Azure and Shan Lai, disrupting distance teleportation between the two. The spatial collapse had also knocked out the whole teleport network for a thousand miles around Blue Water City…

That the rain front had come back out of Yin Eclipse in the afternoon was just unexpected dog-shit on an already rather difficult day.

A day being made even harder by the new realities of the ruined local economy.

“It’s almost like they didn’t think this through,” Ning Sora muttered.

“Oh, it was thought through,” he sighed, twirling his own umbrella.

Two more shops, as they passed, were already closed, likely as much because of the weather as them just having nothing left to sell.

In a way, it was a perfect storm of problems… and the one vexing the town immediately would have occurred anyway, irrespective of all the other events unravelling elsewhere, but sometimes life was just cruel like that.

The problem, simply put, was that there was a shortage of people providing the fuel to make everything run – spirit herbs.

And a shortage of herb hunters.

The guts of the most skilled, most well-connected and the most ambitious herb hunters in the province were either missing in the trial, dead or shut down by the Hunter Bureau.

The lower-ranked hunters, those with actual experience but suppressed ranks who were not in the trial, had been cleaned out by the Bureau when they overturned everything. They had mostly belonged to provincial branches of larger noble clans, and the only one that had not suffered badly at the hands of both sides was the Fei clan, who mostly worked out of Blue Water City.

Many of the independent experts were also in the trial, because politics dictated that the Imperial Continent experts who had come didn’t want to rely on guides who might be associated with the Azure Astral Authority.

The Hunter Bureau’s new management had moved in a lot of new hunters from elsewhere, mostly from the branches of the Sheng and Fei lands on Shan Lai he suspected… but they were running into problems. Firstly that the locals hated everything about this situation and that was only getting worse, and secondly that Yin Eclipse was terrible at the best of times and this was very much not ‘the best of times’.

“It does occur to me that we could just start our own brokerage,” Ning Sora added.

“Tempting, but probably not wise,” he mused as they stared to walk onwards, avoiding the puddles. “Not only is the wet season the worst time to go poking about in Yin Eclipse, idiots have already made several of the lower valleys so dangerous through vegetation stripping and the like, that the main gateways are death-traps even experienced hunters would have issues with…”

“Oh,” she nodded and sighed again.

“Anyone with genuine local expertise not already tied to a big influence is either lying low or already selling their advice for massive profit.”

In a way, it was the culmination of almost 30 years of politicking, but delivered by way of a jar smashed over the head, which everyone else then had to pick up afterward. They did have a few experts, and there were people like him, but most of them were engaged in other vital roles.

The final problem was that the local influences were all hoarding… well, influence… and resources.

Major stockpiles had largely been seized from smaller influences or, in the case of the Kun clan, they had taken what they could from their own and quite a few other warehouses and destroyed everything else they could before going into hiding. Others, like the Ha and Deng, who had been major players before the upheaval, had also raided the other warehouses and taken everything back to their estates while the weakened Hunter Bureau, under new, locally inexperienced management, flailed.

It was, in short, a mess.

A mess getting worse by the hour in some cases, especially as a town that had once run on the plentiful and affordable spirit herbs of a high quality suddenly found that they were neither plentiful and if they did become available they were now by no means affordable.

“They are also controlled by the Myriad Herb Association, I see,” Ning Sora muttered, noting a shop across the road outside watched by four youths in teal clothes, drinking wine under the shelter of the shop front.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Another reason why starting our own gathering association would not go far.”

“…”

She looked at him and sighed, understanding what he meant. She had certainly not meant it as a serious suggestion.

-Anyone we send out would die out there.

That was the final nail in local endeavour: the new influences were aiming for monopoly while the situation was in turmoil, and with the Hunter Bureau still finding its feet, anyone who was not working for a big influence had two choices – sell your expertise to a big influence, or be killed off.

It was cruel, it was short-termist, violent and causing a lot of turmoil… and it was working.

Prices were going up, scarcity was being imposed either accidentally or deliberately, and what was available was being divvied out to buy or keep influence. When the dust settled, the Hunter Bureau’s monopoly of the riches of this province of Yin Eclipse would be gone, unless there was a huge war over it, and the wealth of the region would be locked with a small number of major influences for the foreseeable future.

“VILLAIN!”

“DIE!”

“STOP THEM!”

-A monopoly so long as you can stay alive in this season to see it.

Ahead of them, a second story of a teahouse exploded outwards and three youths dressed in dull robes crashed into the street and streaked off down an alley opposite, daggers still dripping with blood.

After them, four youths from the Fei clan jumped down—

*Crack*

Two of them vanished in a blizzard of gore and alchemical fire as a dropped bomb exploded right under them.

He tilted his umbrella down as red mist swirled outwards, dropping flames onto various stalls as people cursed and scattered.

Shaking her head, Yuan Mai spun her umbrella and then used some qi to get rid of the worst of it.

Four more disciples came tearing out of the lower story, looking around vengefully.

“Let’s go by the other street,” he suggested.

She nodded and turned to walk down the next alley, Ning Sora following after as he brought up the rear.

Their next destination, at the end of the neighbouring street, was a smaller herb emporium, which had a similar tale, but from the other end of the problem. They had been robbed, the previous night, and the owner vanished. All they could do was give their condolences and head on again, feeling even more dissatisfied and aggrieved.

That brought them back onto the river boulevard, adjoining to the river running through the town, which was much the same really: people rushing hither and thither, cursing the weather… What was new, however, was the checkpoint on that bridge, crossing over into the old west river neighbourhood.

“Well, that’s new,” he noted with resignation as they took in the two dozen guards standing around the newly reconstructed bridge, stopping the vast majority of people from crossing over to that neighbourhood, which was barely visible in the hazy rain.

The guards were in two groups, one lot dressed in red and gold, sheltering under umbrellas, many looking quite gloomy, while the other, who were supposedly the central district militia, based on their insignia, mostly wore Ha clan colours and looked more resigned than annoyed.

“Su clan,” Yuan Mai mused, taking in the red and gold group.

“Who are they?” Ning Sora frowned as they took in the group in red and gold shoving another group back who cursed roundly and even spat at them.

“More from Shan Lai,” he sighed… “and by reputation nowhere near as upstanding as the Quan.”

That was something of an understatement really. The Su clan strategy in Blue Water Province could be summed up as: ‘we will take it, and if you don’t like it, our elders from Shan Lai will persuade you’. It was brutal, brazen, shameless and… in the chaos here, effective. They had effectively stolen a march on the other powers – especially the rival newcomers – who were still scrambling in the upheaval, and were now converting that momentary advantage, along with the distinct lack of real repercussions given their powerbase was on a different world, using today’s chaos it seemed, into a bid for greater influence and power, at which point the benefits would outweigh the demerits of such methods and, when the dust settles, they would be so entrenched in the new power structure that it would be difficult to claw anything back from them.

“5 spirit stones says there will be another riot here before night is through,” an old timer sitting on the teahouse veranda they passed observed.

“5 spirit stones says half that lot are dead in their beds by morning,” one of his drinking companions chuckled.

“A jar of wine says they never find who did it,” another added.

“This used to be a nice town,” he grumbled as they started walking on again.

It hurt to see, almost physically. Two weeks, that was, in a way, almost all the time it had taken for chaos to make its mark.

The town authority, such as remained, had reformed a local guard, and a militia, but it only regulated the main district that they were in now, and was only there to protect the interests of those who were on the authority. The Ha and Deng had mostly managed to hang onto what they had, but now the Quan, Fei, Su and a bunch of others were all fighting over control of the town as a whole.

There were daily fights in teahouses and taverns and the inns might as well be fiefdoms of their own, controlled by cabals of influential young nobles and their escorts from the central continent and elsewhere, waiting for the next wave of the trial, here to shore up their clan influences, or to expand here.

The Su clan in particular were the immediate cause of much of this mess.

West Flower Picking town had had a highly centralized warehousing system, as befitted a settlement with a lot of turnover in fresh plants. The Su clan had been among those most proactive in seizing many of the more independent storage warehouses, starting this knock-on avalanche of supply issues as prices spiralled upwards over the last few days.

So… everyone was hoarding, and while Yuan Leng’s estate did have a large stockpile, they also had substantial commitments towards feeding the poor and the dispossessed, such that they would not last long at the current rate. With even low grade spirit vegetation and the like rapidly rising in price, their plan had been to liquidate many of the rarer herbs and materials held by some specialist purveyors to replenish those stocks, but as the day had shown… the land grab some of the new powers had performed had far-reaching consequences as they sought to dominate and redraw the local influence map while everyone was still focused elsewhere.

“Flower, sir?”

He blinked, to find a young girl with a broad-brimmed hat to keep the rain off her dark, slightly wavy hair had spoken to him.

“Flower for the ladies?” she held out the basket rather hopefully.

In happier times, this had been the place where they congregated… the flower sellers.

For a moment, he could see a dozen young girls, smiling and waving at people as they went past, competing to sell blooms on the broad pavement above the bank of the river near the bridge where the street to the western gate crossed the river – sometimes called the Wusheng bridge, or usually just the Mother’s Bridge.

Even then, it had been a bit of façade… Many of them were poor children, illegitimate daughters or orphans… but now there were only two, almost like ghosts haunting an old battlefield.

Shaking off the memory, he looked at the flowers she had… and flinched.

“Flower, sir?” she asked again, holding up the basket of white chrysanthemums.

“These are really beautiful. Where did you get them?” Ning Sora, standing beside him asked admiringly.

Looking at them again, he sighed. They were not the same flowers… those had never bloomed again after his wife died, but they had been the flower she liked the most…

“I’ll take three!” Ning Sora said after a moment’s consideration, picking out three of the prettiest ones and passing over a spirit stone of all things, which the girl shoved in a pocket before anyone could see it.

“Thank you!” she gave a rather bad curtsy and skipped back to the tree where the other girl, similarly attired, was seated, sorting various flowers next to a sign scrawled in Old Easten that said something about peril, an estate and a gate.

With some surprise, he realised why she had seemed so familiar: she was one of the pair from the stall earlier, who had eaten the most fiercely spicy soup ever created at the stall.

“So they have nowhere to go…” Ning Sora had also recognised them it seemed. “That explains the weird discussion I had about delivering takeout…”

“HEY, YOU LOT!” he looked up to see six guards coming along the street towards the bridge, who had spotted the pair and were now advancing on them.

The dark-haired girl stepped back, looking at the guards warily while the other reddish-haired girl by the tree had stood up and was actually holding the sign like a club now, in both hands.

“Begging is forbidden in the central district! Stay where you are and accept your punishment!”

“Disgraceful, showing no respect to the Su clan like this!”

Ignoring the guards’ demands, the pair had already gathered up their stuff and were making their way away, when three of the red and gold robed youths who had been watching from the former ‘Wusheng’ – now ‘Glorious Su’ – Bridge split off and made their way down, cutting off that path.

“Hey… hey, brothers, no need to be so rough with them…” the lead youth grinned.

“Yeah, why don’t you let us handle this?” his companion said with a smile at the pair, who were now looking like they might try running straight for the river.

“…”

The town militia guards eyed the Su clan ones and shrugged.

“Fine, do as you like,” the lead said.

“Disgraceful…” Ning Sora muttered beside him.

He had to nod… Looking around, others, walking on by in the rain, were just ignoring the scene… Presumably nobody wanted to mess with the Su clan, who had already developed a reputation of sorts. They had also been among the most aggressive in ‘controlling’ their portions of the town.

-Though claiming a whole bridge is a first… probably why the Ha are also here, to ensure things don’t get too out of hand.

“Forgive them. These have been rough days for all of us of late, but why are two cute girls like yourselves out here begging?” one said with a tone that sounded friendly enough, but really was anything but.

“You are aware of the penalty for begging? Times are disorderly enough as is, and we don’t want any malcontents stirring up trouble…” his companion said with a similar ‘solicitous and concerned’ smile.

“We aren’t begging,” the dark-haired girl said resolutely, still backing up. “We are selling flowers.”

“And do you have a permission?” the leader said with a grin.

“Permission?”

“Yes, you need a permission to sell on the street, from the district controller,” the second one said.

“Since when?” the red-haired girl scowled.

“…”

“Since today!” the leader of the trio laughed, walking them back a bit further off the road as a fourth youth also arrived off the bridge. “The Town Elders have devolved mercantile administration to the various neighbourhoods.”

“Otherwise you will have to pay a fine, ten spirit stones…” the second one said a bit more forcefully.

-Oh great… he grimaced, glancing at Yuan Mai, who was also frowning now.

Looking at them, there was no way they would have even two spirit stones on them. That was clear as day. That Ning Sora had paid for the flowers with a spirit stone was a generosity few others would bother with, he was sure.

“We may as well take pity on them. It is only the first day of the new measure, after all,” the third youth chuckled.

“Say, miss, how about you and your sister here come back with us, serve us some drinks and we will let this slide?” the new arrival said with a magnanimous grin.

The dark-haired girl shook her head, while her sister was now looking very calculatingly at the group. Both were Golden Core, but probably only that… At their age it was quite an achievement, but all their opponents were Immortals, so any melee would be short and unpleasant probably, if it got that far at all. Intent still worked just fine in this weather.

“Well, if you wish to turn down our offer of kindness, then I’m afraid it will have to be a fine and seizure of goods… and you will have to come with us to explain…” the leader said with an apologetic smile.

“So… how about it, a fine, confiscation… or a few drinks and we all have a good time?” the new arrival said with a broad grin.

-They are actually doing this in broad daylight?

Looking on, and seeing how nobody else was giving it a second glance, just hurrying on by in the rain as if this place was another little world, he felt something just… It was hard to say what exactly the tipping point was.

The flowers…

The shitty weather…

The afternoon spent walking from shop to shop trying to get basic goods only to find they were all out of stock…

The general disorder and ruin of the town he had called home for so long…

The guards doing nothing that a guard should…

The fact that his house had been demolished…

That Arai and Sana were lost somewhere and he could do nothing about it…

That this was occurring not ten paces from the spot where he had proposed to Ruliu…

That they renamed the bridge?

Something within him simply snapped, and he found he had had enough of it—

He had gone two steps, when Yuan Mai put a hand on his arm.

“Please don’t stop me…” he scowled.

She stared at him for a moment then just rolled her eyes. “Just do it right. This town is crawling with young nobles, and they are very pretty flowers.”

“Haaaa.” He realised what she meant and nearly laughed, his momentary fury dissipating a bit.

For a random cultivator to interfere on the pair’s behalf too altruistically would probably just motivate the Su clan to come cause trouble later… The alternative, which she had just pointed out, was to intervene conveniently now with Yuan Mai… and provoke a different kind of confrontation entirely, the kind which would be dismissed by Su clan elders as a childish conflict of the ‘younger generation’.

Thinking matters through rapidly in his head, he waved for Ning Sora to head back into the crowd. The main issue was his clothing, which was a bit common and he had a beard, something not favoured by many juniors… but there was nothing to be done about that.

“I’ll go first,” Yuan Mai murmured.

The four, standing with their backs to the street, encircling around the two girls, were not really watching the street, thankfully, and in this weather, without soul sense, they would likely have gone unmarked before. All of them were Immortals, based on their Intent, and based on their accents, not from the town either…

Watching her walk, he hurried after, sticking close but twisting his presence in the surroundings to make him a little less obvious in the drifting rain and bustle of the street. Not that that needed much effort as anyone nearby would find their eyes subtly drawn to Yuan Mai anyway.

“You know, those are some lovely flowers. I just have to buy all of them!” Yuan Mai exclaimed, stepping off the street and ignoring the four like they were dog-shit to arrive beside the dark-haired girl and the youth who had just taken the basket off her.

The Su clan youths just looked at her sudden appearance in confusion, clearly not expecting another beauty to appear like a ghost out of the mist when they were already trying to drag off two young women.

“Hey… what are…” one of them trailed off, as she brushed past him.

“Miss… please step back from that beggar—”

“Wonderful, so fresh!” Yuan Mai cut off the second speaker, lifting two of the blooms in rapid succession and smelling them, before turning back to the dark-haired girl, who had used the opportunity to slip out of the encirclement with a bright smile. “You are very skilled!”

“Uh… thank you…” the dark-haired girl nodded, moving further away from the youths.

In the background, he saw two more Su clan youths moving past, heading for the red-haired girl, no doubt intending to cut off retreat of their other quarry.

“You! Stop!” One of the youths stepped forward to cut the girl off.

“Miss, these flowers were stolen from a garden belonging to our Su clan. Please do not make things difficult for us.”

“Stolen?” she narrowed her eyes.

“Yes, however, if you’d like we could supply you with some much nicer ones. Brother Mingli here has a certain interest in beautiful blooms… do you not?” one of the youths smiled appraisingly and cast a glance to his companion.

“Ah hah… yes, perhaps we could share some wine and discuss such things, young miss?” ‘Mingli’ murmured, also moving up on the other side.

Yuan Mai glanced at his movement and pursed her lips.

“You, stop that other one running!” the leader snapped, pointing to the red-haired girl holding the sign like a club.

“…”

“My friend was sold flowers like these before, and they were certainly not stolen,” Yuan Mai noted firmly. “Or are you accusing my junior sister of some crime?”

The youth was caught a little off guard there, before recovering. “We are trying to be reasonable, miss… You understand the penalty for buying stolen goods? Theft and trafficking in illicit goods is at an extraordinary high these days, and we are trying to re-establish law and order here… Obviously as a lady of standing, a certain agreement can be reached, I am sure…”

“Perhaps we could discuss this over some wine in an amicable manner?” Mingli added with a pleasant smile, moving to ‘reassure’ her and also block off her retreat, he noted with some amusement. “What sect are you from?”

Yuan Mai turned to look at him with an expression that was for a second uncomprehending, then shifted to tangible displeasure.

It was somewhat amusing that they were so focused on their own production that they had not noticed him following her, truthfully. This is what happens when you overrely on passive soul sense for situational awareness and the rains come, he reflected.

“…”

“Ah, junior sister, this is the flower seller?” he asked, stepping onto the pavement, looking over the group with a frown.

“Ah, they just…” Yuan Mai, who had just shuffled away, was now acting like a carefree ‘junior sister’ who, having been deeply affronted, was secure in the knowledge that her seniors would always be looking out for her.

All of them flinched, surprised to find that he was there, unawares, and appeared to have been observing the whole scene. The smart thing for them to do at this point, would have been to just apologise and diffuse everything, but he was not going to give them that option.

Before the flowers could be tipped out on the ground, he arrived beside that youth and grasped the basket, locking it in place.

“You, what are you—!?”

“Dare to interfere with our Su clan?”

“Scram!” he snapped, putting some intent into his words, but not so much that they might get genuinely spooked. All of them flushed, feeling pressured, and two even stepped backwards, nearly falling into a puddle.

“…”

“How dare you!”

“Old man, you dare impede us?!”

“Get back!”

“You will pay for that!”

None of them pulled their punches, intent-wise; however, the rain was what it was, and they were not martial cultivators… so it was no worse than a light shove really.

“HEY! Are you trying to cause a difficulty with our Su clan?” the leader scowled at him as the two he had pushed aside got up.

-Of course I am, you moron! he thought cheerfully.

“How disrespectful,” he glowered, shaking his umbrella, showing no obvious ill effect from their attempted pressure. “My junior sister wished merely to buy flowers and you are making matters difficult for her! You even accused her before trying to threaten and proposition her!”

“S-senior brother,” Yuan Mai’s eyes actually started to water as she grabbed his arm. “Who are these ruffians?”

“Su clan, huh… Just some Sheng dogs who learned a trick and now think themselves noble lords,” he replied with disdain, looking them over. “You lot should go back to sitting on your tails like guard dogs should. Be grateful for your opportunity,” he remarked, dismissing them.

As far as calculated insults went, calling the Su clan, who had been a vassal power of the Sheng for many years before rising to high status themselves, a ‘Sheng dog’ was almost guaranteed to elicit a reaction.

“You dare!” the one of them snarled.

“Kowtow and apologise!” another spat, half-drawing his weapon.

Looking over the four, none of them were older than 30, despite being Immortals… all members of the younger generation, which was just… amusing really. Before, he had basically been held as a ‘senior’ on a technicality, but with a new identity, he was also a member of the younger generation — and a Golden Immortal.

-The question is, how inexperienced are this lot?

The immediate impression was very, given how easily his insult and intent had riled them but he was not going to risk this on stupidly underestimating them. If this were the West Flower Picking of old, few people risked picking fights in this weather, because the guards knew how to manage matters, knew what the limitations and dangers were. These six, however…

Glancing back at the bridge, he could see that the others were all fully engaged in managing the actual crossing… whereas these six really looked like a bunch sent along to bulk up the numbers…

-Or maybe they just decided to come out and play ‘guard’ for the day rather than lurk in a teahouse and drink?

“Don’t worry, Junior Sister,” he gently held her hand, “I won’t let these rabid dogs do more than bark!”

“…”

“Old monkey!”

The nearest youth ground his teeth as another wave of his intent riled him up. Between the humidity, the rain, the interference and the insults, it was almost embarrassing how easy it was… but he was angry and it had been a long time since he really played the arrogant young cultivator card.

“Who is old?” he scowled, pushing the youth back physically.

“Junior Sister, please ensure those girls are okay,” he added with a winsome smile.

Nodding, Yuan Mai stepped away from him, moving to cut off the other two youths and also passing the basket back to the dark-haired girl.

Looking at the others, who had regrouped and were standing rather arrogantly at ease now, presumably quite happy with 4 to one odds in this weather, he sighed inwardly.

“So you wish to make matters difficult?” the leader scowled gloomily. “Fine, I, Su Feilong, will beat you, old man, and throw you into the—”

His blow hit the leader in the side, knocking his hand away and sending him sprawling in the rain to land against a tree with enough force to shake leaves free.

“You!” the one next to him immediately lashed at him with his scabbarded blade and—

He leant away and caught it, bending that youth’s arm back and disarming him, tossing the blade away hard enough that it would land in the river and then kicked him in the leg – making sure to keep his victim between him and the other two.

{Su’s Righteous Cage}

The talisman triggered around him, but in the rain, its impact was rather curtailed, because the youth had not thought to adjust the qi he was using to compensate.

Focusing his Martial Intent, he broke the shimmering bindings like they were rotten rope and tossed the youth he was holding at the talisman wielder, uncaring for the *snap* of his arm bones fracturing.

“You will regret this, old man!”

Both youths drew their blades and fanned out, flanking their groaning companion who he was forcing to remain standing.

Behind him, the two others advancing on Yuan Mai had run into what he could only call… difficulties. Yuan Mai had hit one with her fan, while the other, surprisingly, had been clobbered by the red-haired girl with the sign, who was now kicking him in the crotch for the second time.

The crowd had also grown, as more people stopped to watch two groups of ‘young troublemakers’ knock lumps out of each other. It was somewhat annoying, but in this instance, in the steady downpour, with a lot of umbrellas and with the trees, it rather pivotally blocked much of the scene on the path by the busy street from obvious view from the bridge.

He was tempted to think that this was the strategy, to let juniors like these draw out problems so they could be dealt with decisively… however, it was equally possible that a bunch had just gotten bored of tormenting brothel maids and wanted to play guard for a day.

“I have many regrets, but breaking your legs will not be among them,” he grinned. “Do your mothers not weep to know you speak to young women as you did?”

“You—!” one of the youths, caught up by the intent he had put into the words, raised his blade high to lash out—

-Idiot.

It took him two steps to cover the distance, halting the youth’s raised arm with his hand and blocking the strike before his opponent could even complete the art’s initial activation. Putting his full strength behind the slam, he sent the idiot flying back off the edge of the embankment to drop with a splash into the river.

Nearby, people looking on were laughing, locals mostly, who knew how idiotically mismatched this kind of fight was in this weather. There were two groups of people you didn’t annoy as a Spiritual Cultivator when the wet season rains came and everyone was suppressed to the Golden Core equivalent: Physical Cultivators and Martial Cultivators.

The remaining youth pulled out a talisman—

He stepped forward and swatted a blade aside, grabbing the youth and physically throwing him across the paving.

“Wha—!”

Before his opponent could recover, he kicked him in the neck, sending a pulse of qi-infused intent into his body and totally scrambling his qi circulation.

“You will regret this, just because you wanted to show off to the ladies!” Su Feilong, who had recovered and stood up, now levelled his blade at him.

“You think you can kill without consequence here?” he asked.

“What consequence?” Su Feilong laughed. “We are from the Su clan. We are the consequences for a toad like you, who has no idea how vast heaven is. This is our district now.”

“…”

-Oh, power-drunk idiots, never change, he thought wryly. You say that, but what if we were from the Huang clan or something…

In a way, Su Feilong was not wrong, the power of their backers meant they could do what they liked… at least in their eyes, and their own strength as Immortals from Shan Lai and juniors likely meant that they anticipated there to be no real stumbling blocks among the locals at least…

And now… the weather was making them even more confident, because they had heard the stories likely, and now experiencing it, probably believed everyone was suppressed to the same threshold.

In a few days, this would be impossible, because people would learn, those with power and influence would take the appropriate steps to counteract matters: guards would all start to be martial experts, not spiritual ones, they would start using talismans designed locally to deal with the influence of Yin Eclipse and its suppression weather patterns, and formations would start to be deployed using cores, rather than people… but until then…

“Here the Su clan is righteousness!” Su Feilong smirked. “What we determine is the law, and when we are done with you, you will remember it for the rest of your miserable, crippled lif—!”

Before Su Feilong had finished speaking, he was already moving forward. His opponent, though caught by surprise, stabbed with his blade, the art already activating, but Su Feilong was too slow… the art he wanted to use too flashy, too ostentatious.

{Sovereign Slaying Sword of S—

He grabbed Su Feilong’s weapon hand and kicked his leg out from under him as he lunged forward, sending him sprawling and disarming him like the child he was. With half a glance at the sword, he focused on it and broke the soul binding with his martial intent, making Su Feilong spit blood, then tossed it away into the river.

Behind him, the other youth was still trying to catch Yuan Mai, who was literally just dancing in a circle around him, slapping him with her fan and twirling her umbrella occasionally to deflect his blade strikes.

The pair of flower sellers had wisely taken the opportunity to make their escape.

Unfortunately, two more Su clan youths had pushed their way through the crowd and arrived.

Taking in the scene, both were caught off guard, gawking for a second, which gave him all the opening he needed. Spinning, he kicked water up at them, its interfering properties disrupting the art one was starting to use, before his foot connected with their side, sending them staggering into the path of their compatriot.

“What realm are—?!”

Cursing, the youth managed to avoid getting knocked over and, in doing so, revealed the weakness of his inexperience. They were all suppressed to Golden Core, but as an Immortal of 29 years old, his opponent had probably spent a year or two at best at Golden Core… As someone who came from a mortal world, he has spent nearly two decades at that realm, working to find a suitable scripture to advance, undergoing various trials and difficulties.

He grinned, sidestepping another strike and blocking the art with a concentration-shattering wave of intent-infused qi projected through his words.

“How many weeks did you spend at Golden Core!”

“…”

The youth’s expression shifted as he no doubt realised what the problem was, then he cast a talisman.

{Water Blossom Blades}

The pooling water for twenty metres around them swirled up into a vicious maelstrom of razor sharp qi—

It was an Immortal Realm talisman, and elsewhere would have caused chaos with the crowd, which just deepened his anger. He stamped on the ground, his martial intent easily scattering it, and then shot forward to arrive before the youth, who was already drawing a second one—

Focusing, he twisted his association with the surroundings a little, disrupting the alignments within the ambient feng shui a tiny bit. In this weather, it was next to impossible to exert serious influence, but even a fractional adjustment was enough in this instant…

“Guaaaah!” the youth shrieked in shock, as the qi around him turned briefly turbulent, the talisman in his hand triggering improperly and sending a shockwave of unstable Yang Water Qi into the immediate vicinity as it turned his sodden red and gold robe to rags. It wasn’t a particularly damaging injury, but it was very humiliating.

That was the danger with talismans. They worked excellently in this environment, but they had their weaknesses and the art of ‘using’ them was hard learned… and those who used them like you would elsewhere were usually humbled quickly as a result.

Grabbing his stunned opponent by the hair, he dragged him up and hurled him back at the guards now advancing from the gate, alerted at last to the disturbance.

The one trying to get at Yuan Mai was also down, he noted, and she was standing, watching with a suitably flushed expression, as befitting the ‘junior sister’ she was playing.

“Enough!” the leader of the Ha guards finally arrived, restoring some order to that side.

“Daoist Ha Fushai,” he nodded cordially, giving him a slight salute.

“You know me,” the older youth, who was a Chosen Immortal and one of the elites from the Ha clan’s out of town estates, mused.

“I have no quarrel with you,” he said politely. “I was merely disgusted at how rampant these youths were in regards to this place and the insult delivered to my junior sister by these uncultured gangsters.”

“Be that as it may…” Ha Fushai said, glancing around at the crowd.

“My junior sister was solicited by them. This affront, in this very place where vows are made, I could not let stand!”

“…”

There was some awkward shuffling in the crowd as well now.

“As I recall, did not your older sister get married on this bridge, Brother Fushai? Did she not exchange her vows at that great occasion, witnessed by the heads the local clans?”

Ha Fushai’s expression went a bit interesting, while, behind him, a few other Ha clan guards were also nodding at that. The local import of places like this was not to be underestimated.

It was a bit of a calculated gamble to mention it, truthfully, but ‘Yuan Zixin’ was not widely known and Ha Fushai was an elite from the Ha clan’s regional estates, not someone who had spent much time in West Flower Picking town anyway. The wedding in question had also been a huge event at the time, widely attended by various eminent figures, including a few from the central continent.

“They will not let this go…” Ha Fushai said with a slightly more moderated tone, eyeing Yuan Mai more carefully for a moment.

“I am sure they will understand once it’s explained to them,” he chuckled.

“…”

“You bastard! I am going to make you—!”

Almost on cue, Su Feilong had gotten up again, his qi stabilized, and was stalking back over, having drawn another sword from his storage ring.

“Enough,” Ha Fushai said, to Su Feilong.

“Ha… you think you have command over me?” the Su Feilong snapped, pointing his new sword at his chest. “This is a deliberate attack on our Su clan. This disrespect… the elders will hunt you down, for a senior to attack juniors like this!”

“Who is a senior?” he grumbled. “Just because I grew a beard you think I am an old man?”

“…”

“When this rain stops, I will be happy to take your challenge,” he grinned.

-Assuming you can find me in this mess of a town and someone hasn’t killed you already.

“I look forward to seeing how you, who is only an Immortal brat, can actually bother me.”

“…”

The youth’s face twisted, clearly not believing him. In a way, circumstances were not doing Su Feilong any favours either. His robe was of decent enough quality and similar in style to Yuan Mai’s that they could pass as being from the same influence; however, his accent was that of a native of the province and the most powerful juniors were largely Chosen Immortals, except in some of the very biggest influences, and all those were rather widely known.

“W-what influence are you from!” Su Feilong finally had the presence of mind to ask. “You think you can just spout—!”

It was tempting to actually oppress Su Feilong, but he had enough experience with this kind of thing to know that leaving the doubt there was more beneficial to him in the long run.

“It is a bit late to ask who you offended now,” he shook his head, then turned and, ignoring them both, departed through the rain, offering his arm to Yuan Mai as he went.

She turned back and glanced at Su Feilong with a dismissive smirk, just to add insult to injury.

Behind him, he noted that Ha Fushai had a worried look on his face and two other guards from the bridge were now physically blocking the furious Su Feilong from following after them.

Possibly there would be a problem, but that was rather predicated on someone being able to identify him clearly in this weather. Additionally, while there was ‘doubt’ over his strength, at worst some Golden Immortal might come to make a nuisance. More likely, they would facilitate Su Feilong himself to deal with it.

In any case, there would probably be no more flower sellers here, after today. Such events had a way of getting around.

The crowd milled about, somewhat directionless now, because he was using his own intent and some minor tricks of feng shui to make himself less noticeable while he looked for Ning Sora.

It didn’t take them long to find her, standing in the shelter of a broad-leafed tree some 30 metres further on.

“Feel better for hitting some snot-nosed brats?” Yuan Mai asked, with an amused smile.

“They deserved it,” he muttered.

“Indeed,” she conceded, shaking her head and starting to walk on again, having disentangled her arm from his.

“They truly did,” Ning Sora scowled and sighed. “What a mess this town has become. How dare they act so rampant!”

Some passers-by gave them odd looks as he passed while quite a few nodded or even smiled but soon they were threading their way among people who had seen nothing and away down the street, leaving the chaos behind them.

“Hey!”

“HEY! Wait… up!”

He turned to find the two flower sellers had also run after them, having previously escaped into the crowd.

“…”

“Thank you,” the dark-haired girl, who looked a little out of breath, said seriously.

“…”

“It was nothing,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I could hardly stand by and let them just drag you off…”

“Not to us,” she sighed a bit sadly.

“Why were you selling flowers there anyway?” he asked, looking from one to the other, noting that the coppery-red haired girl was still holding the sign. “Those new powers are looking for any excuse to exert influence in this place right now.”

“We used to… and we need some money,” the coppery-red haired girl shrugged.

“Inns are expensive and our house is gone,” the dark-haired girl sighed, shifting her woven flower basket to the other hand.

-Used to?

He stared at them, frowning, trying yet again to work out why they seemed so familiar.

-Were they flower sellers before all this mess kicked off?

“Ah… there you are!” another, rather damp young woman appeared from the direction they had just come from.

“Oh, Meixiu!” the red-haired girl said brightly. “Sorry, we uh… had to relocate to avoid some difficulty.”

“Yes, there is a small riot by the bridge. Seems people don’t like spontaneous tolls here either,” the blonde-haired woman, Meixiu muttered.

“Like death, taxes and horny idiots, some things never change,” the red-haired girl nodded seriously.

“Did you have any luck?” the dark-haired girl asked.

“Nope, nada…” Meixiu sighed, shaking water out of her woven grass cloak. “Inn rooms can barely be found, let alone bought for money, it seems.”

“You have nowhere to stay?” he asked, looking sideways at Ning Sora and Yuan Mai.

“Hmmm…” Yuan Mai eyed all three critically then nodded, rather to his surprise, given the idea was… a bit mad really.

“We are short-staffed,” Yuan Mai shrugged, answering his question before he had even posed it, “and you are the young master.”

“…”

The blonde-haired woman, Meixiu, eyed him dubiously, even as he tried not to wince at the intonation Yuan Mai put there. She rarely made jokes, though she had started to be a bit more conversational of late… but the way she had said it made his skin itch slightly.

“If you want, we can probably provide you with rooms,” he said after a moment’s consideration.

“What’s the catch?” Meixiu asked matter of factly.

“Yes, I appreciate that altruism in this town, right now, is a deeply suspicious character trait…” he conceded with an awkward smile.

“You can say that again,” Meixiu muttered.

“However, these are strange and difficult times. We are short-staffed and it is now dangerous for folks, particularly young women without influence, in this town, it seems.”

“When is it not?” Meixiu nodded. “However, we can take care of ourselves—”

“Speak for yourself. I want to sleep in a real bed,” the dark-haired girl muttered, before turning to him with a winsome smile. “Look, we can cook, clean, weave, sweep leaves, wrangle cats and play music that will only slightly make your ears bleed.”

“You forgot we are tolerably good at fishing and also know a bit about herbs,” the red-haired girl added.

“Do you have names?” Ning Sora asked. “I am Ning Sora, by the way.”

“Nen Hong,” the red-haired girl said with a curtsy.

“Ha Fenfang…” the dark-haired one murmured.

“Ha clan?” he blinked.

“Hardly. We tried to go there, but they just kicked us out,” Ha Fenfang pouted.

“…”

-And why do they still seem familiar?

“Honestly, if you can cook spirit food—”

“If you can cook spirit food, you’re hired,” Ning Sora muttered.

“We can do that,” Nen Hong nodded.

“—then certainly we can find work for you and a place to sleep,” Ning Sora finished.

Yuan Mai looked between the two of them and just sighed. “Fine, let’s get back. We still need to break the wonderful news that we are going to have to start cooking the garden if we want to keep feeding people…”

[1] New head of the Hunter Bureau and the disciple who Meng Fu stole the lantern from

[2] A young woman who helps out with Mrs Leng's Spirit Food business.

[3] The Chief Maid and estate manager of Mrs Leng, and friend of Jun Han's wife.